Marc,
I will try to answer your question as best I can. I do trust the Early Pace numbers to give me a raw idea of how the horse will "TRY" to run. But if he is a slow early he may not hold up. a P1 or an S1 will probably run to the back of the pack regardless of what his numbers say in the segments. We also can look at the EPR, LPR and TPR to see where the speed is. New Pace also gives us a look at the total past performances and rates with a 90% probability the range within which the horse should run today. Putting that all together we should be able to have a pretty good idea of how the race will run. Dave Schwartz from his research says 60% of all races run late. So when in doubt play it as if it will run late.
The race you sent is interesting in several ways. One I did not download this race until a little while ago so I don't have PL and BPP numbers. VDC, CSR, PL, and BPP make up the RMath or 4-Score score. It is a key score to calling a race for me. If you look at the 6 red boxes below, note the disparity you will see among the boxes. I would call this a Chaos race and probably pass. Looking at multiple screens if I had to play my key would be the 7. He has the most consistent scores across all of the 6 red boxes. Companion horses would be a bit tougher.
The Segments screen supports that the 8 will get the lead without much trouble and the question is, "Who can catch him?" The 5, 6,7 and 4 appear to make up the ground on left side of the screen under the Fin Panel. and under the late side under the TS+F3 panel if the race should finish late. With 1 Early horse why not play him as a Companion horse? If he wins great, if not you have the late horses to beat him or the Key to come in 2nd where you make a good profit with an unlikely winner and your Key coming in 2nd.
New Pace adds some good information in this race. Our 7 is confirmed as the best Leverage Pace horse, he has good SR rating. A great choice as a Key. The 8 with the 63% shows he will get the lead. So who are our companions? If we agree that it will run Total or Early then we Key the 7 with the 5,6,8,4.
If we play it late from the NP screen, we key the 7 with the 6,2,1,5. Note who the top 4 horses are.
All of this is to say determining the pace bias is a bit of an art and takes work but mostly calling the bias for the race, watch it and figure out why it went the way you called it or not. It will mostly follow the Early Speed Points but sometimes it won't. These are horses and if you have ever owned one, they can be very stubborn and do only what they want to do. We are playing probabilities here. (Editorial Comment: A 120 pound man can only hang on to a 1200 pound horse on the loose.)
and by looking at the race we see the 8 got loose had a nice lead but really folded in the stretch. Our 7 ran up close in a Presser position and closed nicely. The 2 ran in mid pack early and closed to 3rd at the 2nd call and hung on. The 6 ran a rather disjointed race but finished 3rd with the 1 and 4 close behind.
I hope this helps Marc.