A(nother) ballast resistor question

IMHO...

under normal automotive driving, the lag to get the current up through the ballast is fast enough.

Think the blinker, how fast it goes from open to closed, the ballast would be like that on stariods.

The ceramic is not to hold heat just to support the wire while it is burning off excess energy. Once the load is reduced the wire returns to normal fast or at least easy enough.

I would suspect that in true high performance / racing application it would not be there at all. And the coil would just suffer one run at a time, or be designed to handle the heat