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First, thank you to Dick and Bill for taking the time to deep dive into this and put real data behind the question. This kind of work helps all of us better understand what the RDSS readouts are actually telling us instead of just assuming we know. Looking at these charts, my first takeaway is that FX and FW are not necessarily single-horse prediction tools, but they do appear to be very useful contender-zone tools. The strongest pattern I see is that once you expand to the Top 5, both factors do a very good job of containing the winner across dirt, turf, and poly. Top 3 looks a little too restrictive in many cases, but Top 5 seems to be where the usefulness really shows up.
One thing this also made me think about is the relationship between FX and the turn. In many races, the winning move does not suddenly appear in the stretch; it often begins on the turn, where horses either sustain position, advance into contention, or start to come apart. Since FX combines early involvement with finishing ability, I do not see it as a direct turn-time factor, but I do think a strong FX horse may often be showing that it handled that middle-race transition well enough to still finish. To me, that makes FX valuable as a confirmation factor. If a horse fits the race structure and also lands inside the Top 5 of FX or FW, that is meaningful. I would not use either factor blindly as an automatic win button, but I would absolutely respect them as contender validation tools.
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