Face it, racing is a sport where money will most certainly have an advantage.
Unlike stick and ball sports; buying a better/newer baseball glove, basketball, football, shoes, etc will not make junior a better athlete or win more games.
Whereas buying better/newer race equipment almost certainly results in better finishes.
Not a guarantee, mind you, just that it is generally going to be faster.
See, it doesn't matter if you have blueprinted tires or not...Now the conversation has turned to money.
If a guy has $10,000 in his budget to spend on his racing; even if you impound his tires, he's still going to spend that same $10,000, he'll just spend it elsewhere in his team to gain an advantage. There is a reason that you see the top guys on new equipment (dirt and pavement.) If they could win with a Banshee or Stalker, do you think they'd be running the newest latest stuff available? Same with the sprint race crowd...I don't see too many older Margays or Coyotes up front anymore. There is a reason. Newer stuff is faster, and this newer stuff costs money.
I've said for years that the best drivers in the world are probably not running F1, Indy, or Nascar.
They're running at some local Saturday night track and simply haven't met the money to get them to that next step.
At some levels of karting, we've spec'd almost everything (tires - ie MG, YLCs, ELs, etc; engines - ie LO206, Predator; chassis - ie Margay Ignite; and more,) and still the cream rises to the top. We've dumbed it down to make everything as equal as we possibly can and you still have guys crying "unfair" when they get beat by someone with more experience (whether they've spent more money or not.)
Face it, despite our attempts to make everything "equal," the guys with experience and knowledge will consistently be more successful than folks that have just gotten into the sport.