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If your pavement is not perfect (e.g. too wet, too cold, etc), you WILL lose traction during a WOT launch on a RWD or FWD car. I had this happen all the freaking time in my AH3. Even on 1->2 shifts on highway onramps when hitting bumps.
You can either upgrade to track quality ultra high performance tires, or you can attempt to turn off ASR/DSC so that your car does not attempt to avoid wheelspin, which is wasteful on your tires and makes a scene out of aggressive takeoffs.
A 150lb weight increase (e.g. 3% of the curb weight) is not as catastrophic a handicap as you make it out to be. The technique you quoted is virtually how EVERY magazine does their launch tests -- AWD or RWD. The manufacturer supplied number is a more accurate estimate of the car's non-brake-torqued / non-launch-controlled 0-60.
The only "exploitation" here is that AWD in a sports sedan application will consistently shave off tenths of seconds due to recuperating the valuable time lost by wheelspin. And that's something that easily overcomes the marginal weight gain of such systems.
Does this apply to the N20? Probably not as much as to a more powerful BMW. It's a relatively low power low torque engine. It will likely matter if you live in a climate where you choose to have all-season tires rather than the max performance compound optimized to your climate.
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