I run SCCA, PCA and NASA in the Southeast.
I have not experienced race time being taken in favor of DE time. I have seen the reverse.
Ask Steve Eckerich about race time being shortened in SCCA :-).
I run one of the core groups, 944 CUP/Supercup so competition is very good and at least a dozen in the class both last year and this. At my last NASA event the tech inspector was the same as my last SCCA event(SIC).
Different strokes for different folks.