I'm with you on the added nose weight.
Here's the bottom line bragging that you hang at 9" doesn't mean squat if you can't use it for getting down to business.
A dedicated road coarse car; if it were mine, would have the biggest brakes I could squeeze on the front and rear of it with adjustability, full suspension work with all urethane CC plates, most-likely all coilovers, major chassis stiffening/bracing both front and rear towers... Moly full cage with non removable side bars and goes through the firewall to the front towers, overkill for a cooling system, torque box kit, a baffled fuel tank/cell, best rubber on the lightest forged rims I could buy and then after all of this, I would look into building some power. Don't forget the lightweight seats with current 5 point harness.
Foxes are nose heavy. Manual rack, manual brakes, K member and a-arms, alum heads electic pump, fans, high rev clutch, quick release quad, TKO, alum shaft with two safety loops, and build an engine that will be in the 3500-7500 power range and tune an exhaust to compliment it.
There's plenty that I have left off, but all the power in the world won't compliment a poor chassis on a road course.
So I guess the real question is, do you want to brag about big hp, or respectable lap times?
i would say with my car i hit a very large amount of those, true i dont have a cage yet but i want the car to be closer to finished so i dont have to contort around a cage, i have the largest brakes i could possibly fit on the front, many guys have tried to fit the larger 14" brake packages with the 6.48" backspaced rims and they dont fit, i do have some brake ideas in the works but currently do not have them installed on the car, dont need a torque box kit as the torque boxes are no longer used with the 3 link, hoosier road racing 275's sit on all corners, i disagree with the manual rack (sorry my preference) also have coil overs and subframes PHB, STB, K-member, basically if MM made it its on my car, now we are getting down to the engine, im not sure if your post was idrected to everyone, Chris or myself but i think so far im on the right track