There has been much discussion at the track about what is and isn’t the best race engine we have had at HRP. It is a discussion that has brought many heated arguments, changes from HRP and contention among players new and old. After many years the race engine has morphed into what we have today but still there are two camps, one that says it is the best ever and one that says it still has many glaring faults.
So, I thought I would jump into the fray and take a look at what we have in an effort to understand where we are really at with the most important part of this wonderful game.
After many, many years writing for the SRF I have observed each race engine firsthand mostly at the highest level, stakes racing. We have had the closers engine, the speed engine, the follow two by two race engine so there has been plenty of experimenting along the way but have the code writers finally got it right?
Ok, let’s have a look: There is no doubt when the engine was first launched that it seemed to have an on-speed bias, wide gates tended to go back, and closers fought to get to the rail before making late runs to nowhere. At that point the Support Team, in an effort to explain how this race engine differed and was improved, seemed to suggest that it was an engine built around the abilities of the individual horse and thus proclaimed the rather startling news that we, as players, should consider using horse lead as an instruction far more than we had been in the past.
Instructions had, in the past, been used extensively so this was a rather bold statement considering that many saw the instructions as an integral part of the “skill” of the game. But if you think about it, it would certainly make sense, In a 12 horse field if all 12 were using a variety of instructions then the race engine was bound to struggle to sort out each horse taking into consideration it’s natural speed or lack of, the jockey abilities, the effect of the draw, the track bias, the going and the way the horse had been trained and raced in the lead up to the day. All these things had to happen in the first half of the race, and it is perhaps understandable that some would be severely disadvantaged as the program tried to work out those first few furlongs. So, this is probably the reason that horse lead was floated as being an option, an option that gave the race engine a smaller margin for error.
As the months went by in those early days and it seemed that on-pace horses had an advantage, so more people abandoned horse lead and began to instruct their horses to go forward and soon we were seeing fast early splits and speed duels up front. Low and behold we have seen this year that more closers have managed to time their runs past tiring leaders and win some of the early stakes races.
So, is pace the key? is it all about what happens in the first half of the race? Well, let’s take a look at a few races at random to find out.

Let’s start with last year’s KYD, a big field, lots of quality horses and long enough ago that we were still experimenting with the new engine.
The winner Bad Debt got a comfortable lead going through the half mile mark in just under 48 seconds on a good track. The only pressure for the lead came from the wide gate but the pace was never pushed beyond what Bad Debt was comfortable in running. The runner up Poison Arrow was just under 6 lengths back in 14th place with third placed Fire Chase just over three lengths back in 9th. As they rounded the home turn Bad Debt was still unchallenged in the lead as the wide stalker began to tire and all the closers were fanning wider and wider to try and mount their challenge. We will all remember the run to the line as the challengers rushed to close the gap, but Bad Debt had set up a big enough lead to hold on.
At the time this seemed typical of the race engine, lone speed was holding on regardless of how fast they went, and the closers were all rushing late but failing to get their timing right.
So, moving on to a couple of three-year-old races this year, qualifiers for the 2025 KYD.

We will start with the Holy Bull won by Tropical Surge with a stalking run. The half mile pace in that race was 46.87 and the leader had come from a wide gate and had a fairly uncontested lead through the four furlongs but had had to push hard to cross from gate 11. The winner sat on the rail for the trip before pushing out and going to the lead. The closers came late but like the KYD could not eat into the winner’s advantage.
The Davis Stakes over the same trip again went to a stalker in the shape of No Real Drama. Again, the wide gate went hard to get an uncontested lead going through the half mile in 46.80, a very similar time to the Holy Bull and over the same trip. Again, the stalker pushed through to lead and the closers fanned wide but once again could not close the gap.
OK so two similar races, let’s take a look at The Withers over a sixteenth of a mile further. In this race we saw much contention for the lead with changes and pressure right from the start, however when we look at the half mile time it is 46.85 much the same as our two other races. In this race our winner Boss Spearman came from off the pace closing hard from wide.
In the final example let’s look at the Smarty Jones over a mile and sixteenth. The winner Salah came from mid pack after an uncontested leader went through the half mile in 46.40, the fastest of our examples. The faster pace saw the deeper closers doing well but again the winner had got first run from mid-pack and held on pretty comfortably.

I must admit in looking at these races I am seeing what seems a fair race engine. Closers can win, stalkers can win, leaders on the other hand seem a bit less likely than they were a year ago but much of the speed I am seeing in these races comes from wider gates so maybe that is a result of that early push. Going on what I have seen and of course there are hundreds of other examples, some with speed winning and some with closers winning, I would say this is a fair race engine. The question is, as instructions were given a dumb down, are we now seeing the best horses win, with the fairest runs and without a manipulated pace? It is a question I could try and answer, but I have no doubt that whatever I say would just be an opinion and as such would be worthless. I would say however, that this race engine certainly seems fair, it may not feel that way when your horse goes ten lengths back from the gate or rushes out in 22 for the first quarter but on the whole the people who write the code may finally have settled on a good engine to build on.

Categories: EDITORIAL, Racing Information