Now to be fair, I'm not saying a valence will have zero effect on a vehicle. But that's the thing. It's this crazy overconfidence that "Oh yeah, doing X will absolutely result in Y" that just makes me roll my eyes.

I think it becomes clear very quickly in racing, that those who act like they have a crystal ball for what everything will do... are usually the clueless ones. Always lots of hand waving. When someone can put bounds on what they know or don't know and where their experience has come from - that becomes more credible.

Regardless, if there's a lack of parity and the cars get strung out seconds between each other and the leader checked out... doesn't matter if there's a splitter or valence, a spoiler or wing, or whatever. Cars need to be able to get close enough to each other, be it by parity of performance or strategy options or what have you, to know how they race.

Personally I think the best races are where it's not obvious who's going to win from the drop of the green flag because their car is just that much better than everyone else. When it's fair game between several teams, that's fun. Likewise best seasons are when performance between drivers and teams ebbs and flows - that at least we're already starting to see.