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The long wheelbase FF is probably not going to be as good in tighter turns. A 125 with a short WB seems to be able to easily change line to go around bigger/longer bikes in a corner, though some of that is probably due to very light weight. A low center of gravity FF will have to lean a little more for a given corner and speed than a higher CG bike will. Modern RR is a very physical sport, and the recumbent won't lend itself to the rider moving around the way a conventional bike will.
It might end up being a horses for courses kind of a deal, where the high speed large radius-corner track works better for the low FF and a tight track works better for the conventional bike.
The problem is that unless you can get a top rider interested in the concept and willing to work with a builder to develop a bike away from the races we'll never know. Winning in modern RR is a matter of minute evolutionary changes and no one is going to start with a clean sheet and try to race against the bikes with years of development, and even if they decided to do so they'd probably better have a big fortune of their own to spend because they will probably have a hard time convincing sponsors to pony up megabucks.
There are a few riders who are decently fast club racers that have built conventional bikes with FFEs and they are finding that a tire that works fine with a telefork is very hard to get up to temperature with the FFE. So you need to get a tire manufacturer to build a tire optimized for that. The Elfs had support for special tires from Michelin back in the old 500cc GP days for their FFEs, but I think some of that may have been due to it being a French team running French tires.
Don't get me wrong, I've got a mildly sporting FF with FFE project "resting" in the garage, and if I ever get it running it will see some track days and I'll be happy to loan it to any fast riders (I'm not) who want to try it to get feedback. I think it is possible that a 50th percentile or lower rider might go just as fast on the FF, or maybe feel more comfortable and go a little faster. The Gurney Alligators are reported to be able to be hustled along at a pretty good clip, but then if it is Eddie Lawson on his 'gator it is hard to say if it is the rider or the vehicle that is the determining factor.
cheers,
Michael
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