Here's an example of the occasional pitfalls associated with the "facts"
Aqueduct April 12th Race 6:
Trakus Time: 1:22.24
Official Time: 1:23.50
Aqueduct April 12th Race 8:
Trakus Time: 1:21.97
Official Time: 1:22.01
As you can see...
http://www.nyra.com/aqueduct/videos/...0140412/6/pan/
The clock malfunctioned during the running of Race 6. Now, because of the tricky camera angle, seven furlong races are among the very hardest to "hand-time" -- so I won't be too critical of the lousy job by whoever hand-timed the 6th race.
Anyway, 1:22.28 (The Trackus time, plus 0.04) would be the proper final time to use for Race #6 in order to get it in harmony with Race 8.
In other words, the 1:23.50 "official" final time, that is in the past performances and result charts, is garbage.
This stuff happens a whole lot more at some places, than others. For every one time it happens on the NYRA circuit, it happens a lot more frequently at some cheaper tracks. There are some cheap tracks that were a pleasure. Emerald Downs had almost no timing problems and good chart callers. But, than you have places like Penn National and especially Evangeline Downs -- where screw-ups happen all the time. The chart callers at Golden Gate were the sloppiest I encountered, in regard to simply reporting the correct final time.