Hi Himes, sorry didn't answer sooner but I wrote too much to redhead and wasted too much time at work! :-o
You can read my redhead reply for a bit of insite. I wish there were just formulas. Basically it's a whole process. (And I'm doing the "simplistic" version!)
I'm new to Beyers, so I'm no expert. But I've read through his book "Picking Winners" a couple times about the speed figures, added his last "Beyer on Speed" which looks at it w/some modification. Before I finally got the books I got some info from other players. Being a data nut the basic premise as described by handicappers seemed sensible to me, but I didn't know the specifics. Now I know enough to be dangerous. But I still have alot to learn; this is sort of truly immersing me in the whole Par Method process.
Generally this is how I see it. For some track, you get times for all races run in a year, divide them by their lengths and classes and age/sex. Average all the times in each class/dist/age/sex. Then pick the claiming class and distance most representative of daily racing (provides large # of data), and assign its average time a standard figure (80 for Beyer). Then find out how many Beyer points = fifth-seconds for the distance. Then a "time table" of times to Figures is produced based on that 80 Beyer/avg claiming time using the aforementioned. Now go back to the distance average times for all classes, and fill in the associated Figure next to the avgs. This gives you a "par chart" for each class of horses - regardless of distance.
For a given race, you'd get the speed figure by comparing the associated figure from the "time table" of each race that day w/its applicable par figure. Averaging the differences for the card gives the variant, which you add to the horse's initial figure to make up for slow or fast tracks (relative to the year's averages).
Best thing you can do is read Beyer's book. As you can see, it's kind of complicated. Too much even for me to describe well!
I still don't have Beyer's middle book, "Winning Horseplayer", so I'm lacking something, I'm sure.
