TurfPedia™ - The Horse Racing Encyclopedia

PROJECTED TIMES

The reliance on accurate pars to estimate daily track variants, although highly recommended, is not the state-of-the-art. Pars are averages. At any class level some races will be faster than average and some races will be slower than average. Thus some winners will exceed par and others will not, not due to fluctuations in track-surface speed, but due to differences in real abilities. Expert speed handicappers refer to the phenomenon as class-within-a-class. They are loath to accept the limitations inherent in the wholesale reliance on par times.

The correction is a reliance on projected times. Whenever a particular field looks significantly stronger or weaker than par, figure handicappers can "project" today's final time, based upon the well-known figures of the specific horses in today's race.