I took the 50 races they ran at GP last week and ran them through a spreadsheet I made.
This was not the intended purpose of the spreadsheet, but this kind of analysis is well within its scope.
What I did was compare the official closing prices, for each horse, to how they actually performed on the track.
The end result is a rating I'll call "volatility Rate." The lower the number, the more formful the race.
I highlighted the races on Saturday because a lot of chalk won that day. Interestingly enough those races all came back with good scores even though i'm measuring all the horses rather than just the winner. The PWC came back as the second most formful race out of the 50 they ran last week.
Results show that the synth races are more volatile than the non-synth races. The difference is around 10% for the small sample size I worked with. So, I guess synth races are 10% harder to handicap.
Spreadsheet printout attached ... when/if I figure out how.
The internet is also messed up today. Must be all the synthetic snow we're getting.