User blog comment:Stark Jegan/Showdown Mode Research Test/@comment-34918040-20191104103136

Hi, how did this idea come to your mind? Did you have a winning streak with a black car? I'm asking because I see several difficulties:
 * 1) Why should developers program this? Ok, let's imagine a bunch of real nerds who just have fun adding some unexpected details to a feature. So it is possible, but not very probable (in my mind).
 * 2) Concerning your assumed real life parallels: The colour of a black car only merges with its environment (the road) if you look at it from above. This is not the case, neither in the game nor in real life when you are driving a car—you have a more horizontal perspective. And imagine tracks like Iceland or Alps with their predominant white. This makes it even less probable that a "stealth" property for black cars has been implemented.
 * 3) The test environment: I always refrained from statistical tests involving races, for one reason: There are too many parameters you cannot control.
 * 4) If there was this stealth feature, would it only work in dark tunnels or tracks like Transylvania at night? Or also on tracks like Alps and Iceland?
 * 5) Different driving skills. This could be taken care of if only data from the same driver was compared (black vs. white car). But apart from this, winning a Showdown race is the most random event one can imagine:
 * 6) The drop rates of Power-Ups on the road (you might get "good" or "bad" ones) are unknown.
 * 7) The mood of your opponents is unknown ("kill kill kill" vs. "leave me alone, I want to drive").
 * 8) The outcome of a race also heavily depends on the number of racers. If you are the leading car and there are seven other racers, you can be sure that it will rain Surge Strikes on you which you can't compensate with Force Fields. Seven racers will always pick up more Power-Ups than you can. On the other hand, if there are only three other racers, chances are good that you can neutralize most of the attacks and stay at position 1.
 * 9) Race results may also depend on the time of the day you race (working hours: do adults have another racing style than minors?; time zones and geographic reasons: Do Asians have another racing style than Europeans?).
 * 10) Race results may also depend if you do most of your races at the beginning of an event (some drivers will still be unfamiliar with the track, many will also drive unboosted just for fun) or at the end (many drivers will be boosted because they want to get certain rewards, and their style may be more aggressive).
 * 11) Don't underestimate the changing process of the game. There are changes in every update, be it changes they tell you (6 pulses instead of 5) or not (like drop rate changes for Pro Kit Boxes). In one year, Showdown will most probably not be the same as today, so you'd have to constantly adapt your parameters.

So the main difficulty is to separate unknown factors. I'm afraid it is impossible to draw clear conclusions because in most cases you can't exclude that there were other reasons for a player to win or lose that you simply don't know. Or you'd have to force your participants to make videos of all their races, provide their age, job, mood, game progress, owned cars, time of race etc. First, no one will do that, second, you'd have to manage such a huge amount of data that it would take months to evaluate it.

But as I was in the mood, I did some test races with a white car. Results of seven consecutive races are in the pics to the right. I should have had bad results if your assumption was true. But actually I never ever had such a long winning streak in Showdown mode. One or two black cars present in some races, as far as I could see at the start.

I'm afraid you will invest a lot of time in a test that will not lead to satisfying results in the end. If you just have fun investigating this, go ahead. I wasn't sure either where it would lead when I started WikiProject Statistics. But in my opinion, the benefit of knowing if a black car has more chances to win doesn't justify all the efforts. I mostly do Showdown races until I finish first to get the 25 Tokens, then I stop. Otherwise it's too much time for too little rewards.