>>1904670
For front runners, the key skill is "Groundwork", not early lead. Early lead is budget Groundwork. This is the real issue with front runners, the only practical source of this is a white spark after using either the Oguri power card, or the guts card that has it. So you need to raise parents with groundwork on top of the normal good sparks, meaning you need way more focus and good RNG to make these horses. Also you need 2 front runners always, to ensure that there is competition between them.
You basically need to super high roll multiple times on both the parents and inheritances to raise a good enough front runner.