There’s been a lot of discussion on the forum about how ZRS is going. The last information shared by Zwift is that they are going to make a change to the seeding algorithm that might shift things a bit so we’ll just have to see how that goes.
The way things are now, riders who have a huge sprint but poor sustained power end up racing against people with no sprint and good sustained power. This creates a race environment that’s more “horses for courses” so those riders with poor sustained power should expect worse results on races with hills or determined breakaways. The only way to address that right now is to train for those conditions or expect worse results, and expect that that kind of outcome is possible so work harder at the chase because the dynamics have changed. Don’t go into it expecting an easy ride on the climbs or that breaks will be automatically brought back. Expect better results on flat routes.
Whether it’s fair or not depends on your perspective. In the previous regime sprinting well counted a lot for winning but not at all for getting upgraded. Now you get upgraded for it. In the previous regime sprinty riders could expect to get over the climbs typically found in Zwift races with the leaders and then blast them at the finish. Riders with better sustained power and a poor sprint got upgraded so you didn’t have to race them. They rarely won in categories below A. Now they might win.