[Ted Craven]

Although I don't mean to speak for Dave Schwartz, I venture the opinion that he would say that he trusts his particular Speed Rating numbers (e.g. HDW's, or perhaps the DRF's as used to illustrate NewPace in his videos) to be properly equalized and manipulated so that they reflect (as best it is possible) a normalized view of these disparate distances, surfaces and tracks. So don't worry about it - if you trust the comparability of your Speed Ratings.

That said, no matter HOW GOOD any vendors SRs are, there are degrees and then degrees of confidence you should have in any attempt to compare the non-comparable. So, if I had to make fine-grained judgements, I might be more confident in the 90% confidence SR range produced for a horse whose distances, surfaces and track were more homogenous, and rather less confident for horses like the above examples.

Everything in our racing analysis deals in degrees of certainty or risk, and what we get paid for prudently undertaking that risk.

That said, maybe there is a way to attach a confidence factor to the ratings produced by the standard NP formula (or any formula for that matter), depending on a measure of non-comparability or noise in a horse's PPs compared to the conditions of the race its entered in today ...?

Ted