No disrespect meant, by all means, but, in my opinion, if your friends are saying that they notice a power difference (as in HP) in a street car, they are probably imagining it. They think that it is so they feel that it is.

That being said, if you plan on racing quite a bit, I would go with the electric fan and fuel pump. The fan because of high RPM's (have you ever had a clutch fan sieze up. Not pretty) and the fuel pump for continuous fuel flow. I do know of one person that used to run a mechanical fuel pump and his car would starve of fuel at WOT and around 1000 ft. But that was with a lot more than 450 HP.