All I have to add is that I put a bronze gear on my (not for racing) Unilite about 16 years ago and have used the same setup on 3 engines with 3 different Cams. 2 were/are Solid Rollers and one was a cast Solid. Still running to this day with no obvious issues. Granted, not a high mile car but hundreds of Drag Race passes. Never had a steel gear nor saw the need however your results may vary.
Dale, if it were a dedicated street car, I think it would have a different outcome.
Even if you had the distributor in 3 different engines and put 1000, 1/4 mile passes on each, that's only the equivalent of driving 750 miles. The bronze distributor gears will usually go several thousand miles and then they start to get sharp.
Brent, not to be argumentative, but I know that Dale does not use a tow vehicle in the pits, so between driving from the pits to the starting line, making the run, driving off the end of the track , and back to the pits, each 1/4 mile pass is easily a full mile, and that is not including the warming up of the engine, the burn out, or any other time that the engine spends running.
The new 347 SBF in my Fairmont has a billet hydraulic roller cam, so I swapped out the iron gear from MSD Billet distributor, from the old engine, which had a solid flat tappet cam, to a new bronze MSD gear. I have made 50 1/4 passes so far, after the last race in a couple of weeks, I will pull the distributor to see how the bronze gear is doing, and will report back here.