The Daily Track Variant

[Jeebs]

Looking at recent races from PRX and MVR, I am observing kooky Trackmaster Daily Track Variants ranging from the mid-high -30s to the -70s... guessing that this is because of frozen winter surfaces. This becomes problematic when rating races because the adjusted lines - regardless of whether a range of DTV or percentage of DTV is selected - are simply unrealistic. Whether you're in the BLT/C or original guidelines camp, it makes selecting the proper line for your process a headache in many races. Even if a horse legitimately ran a great race or a bad one, using what is a clearly aberrant paceline - or even selecting an alternative line in its place - can be costly.

That being said, would RDSS better serve the player by giving its user other adjustment options outside of the Trackmaster numbers? In the Brohamer/Massa version of Modern Pace Handicapping, adjustments were done either automatically (using the Bris or Beyer number) or manually (using user defined FPS variants in +/- 0.5 point increments). While most don't have the time or energy to create their own figures/variants, perhaps an alternative automatic adjustment method would be beneficial. I'm not sure if the DRF style SR and TV are part of the Trackmaster file structure, but if it is, would this old school method - instead of the Trackmaster/Equibase DTV - possibly do a better job of "tightening up" extremely fast or slow races so that these races are not so "off the charts" and making average lines seem superhuman (or should I say, "superequine")?