>>531229649
>Then you never proc any skills and wonder why you lost.
The aptitude penalty has no bearing on skill activation rate, it's only used for the Position Keep rolls.....but those rolls are not important for Front Runners since they're always at the front of the pack, unless there's 10+ front runners (which basically never happens, even like 4 is a lot) you can't get boxed even with a 90% penalty to the stat check.

ALSO, the Wit checks for Position Keep are further reduced in significance since Skill activations automatically override their results and Skill activation isn't affected by Aptitude. So even with a G aptitude as front-runner, if your horse has a Front-Runner skill that procs and grants acceleration or speed or whatever, she'll automatically enter Pace Up and move up in priority despite the 90% penalty. This is also why even minor acceleration skills proc'ing in the middle of a race can seem to have a major effect and have your horse move up several positions, it's the target speed buff and position keep override that matters, not 10% more acceleration when you're not even accelerating