Why do people use hood pins on IT cars that only participate in sprint races?

Jeff Lawton's recent hood pin (or lack there of?) incident got me thinking about this subject again. He's far from the only person who this happened to; even some great teams with real crew have experienced the hood in the windshield trick.

While walking around the grid at races (primarily thinking about the ARRC and IT Fest) I see many cars with hood pins have them taped so it doesn't hurt their car's aero. Not that makes the whole thing even more silly.

What advantages are there of having hood pins that outweight the disadvantages? In the beginning of my racing, I considered putting them on my car but only because I thought they were cool and would make my car one step closer to a real racecar.