I ride a road-plus bike, going for safety over max speed: if I hit an unexpected road anomaly on my 48mm tires at 30psi, I'm unlikely to lose control; while hitting the same thing on a 23mm tire at 110psi may lose control. If you lose control, you probably injure yourself, with the broken clavicle being one of the common injuries. While you are recovering from the injury, you are losing performance at an exponential rate. So from my perspective, if the road-plus bike has protected me from crashes that I would have experienced on a typical road bike, then the road-plus bike is the faster bike (because it allowed my engine to grow stronger).