Today’s lesson: fast tracks lead to fast times.

War and Thunder, a six year-old gelded son of Limehouse out of the Relaunch mare Launch Site, set a track record for 5 1/2 furlongs at Laurel Park yesterday, getting the distance in 1:02.41.  That broke the record set in 2006 by the largely forgotten Diamonds in Style by one-one hundredth of a second.  War and Thunder dueled outside of Blimey for the early lead, took command leaving the turn, and held Blimey safe the rest of the way under jockey J.D. Acosta.  On a day when six of the nine winners were on the lead or within a head of it after a quarter mile — and two of the three farther back were odds-on — that was the trip to have.  War and Thunder is a useful sort who’s won nine of 25 career starts and more than $160,000, but his career-best Beyer entering the race was 84 — not exactly anyone’s idea of a record-setter…

Speaking of fast times, on Saturday — a day of very fast times at Parx Racing — debuting three year-old Favorite Tale blazed to a two-length maiden victory in blazingly fast time: 1:07.66 for six furlongs.  That was just .15 seconds off the track record set by eight-time stake winner Royal Currier back in 2011.  Sent off as the 6-5 favorite, Favorite Tale had a trip much like War and Thunder would a few days later: dueling outside of a rival, this time Onthewhistle, and edging clear in the lane.  He won over that foe by two, and it was another 3 1/2 lengths back to Gourmet Delight.  Favorite Tale, a colt by Tale of the Cat out of Tricky Elaine, by Grindstone, is trained by Guadalupe Preciado for owner/breeder Paul Conaway…

Speaking — sort of — of time, Charles Town will be changing its first post time.  Starting Tuesday, January 14, first post will be at 7:00 p.m., rather than 7:15…

At the recently completed Keeneland Horses of All Ages Sale, Maryland-bred Life Happened fetched the second-highest price of the event.  The 13 year-old Stravinsky mare — a half-sister to Disco Rico — is the dam of multiple graded winner Vyjack and grade 3 winner Tepin.  She’s believed to be in foal to Harlan’s Holiday and brought a winning bid of $750,000…

Another day lost to weather on Tuesday, as Penn National was forced to cancel.  The track is scheduled to run this evening, though it’s reportedly snowing this morning, with a forecast for “ice pellets,” which doesn’t sound very conducive to conducting live racing…