You are tuning the engine for peak performance or a particular engine performance profile, it is irrelevant whether that is done in first, second, third, top or reverse. What you have to be careful about is when you compare results done on different Dynos with the vehicles in different configurations.
In this case Ron's and my vehicles are both automatic 4.6 V8s done in second gear, so the results are comparable.
If we were attempting to decide the peak performance to compare about the published data on an XYZ model car then we would have to take the engine out of the Range Rovers and place them on engine dyno's. Hardly real world measurements at all.

