The pic doesnt do it much justice, it was pretty white at the base of the electrode.
You have to remember that a spark plug is
NOT an instrument that measures power, acceleration, air/fuel ratio, throttle position, RPM or combustion pressure or temperature.
We can only observe the operating temperature of the spark plug and any deposits that accumulates on it. That is all were can conclude from looking at a spark plug.
Reading sparks plugs requires a lot of painful and expensive past experience with a particular engine. Every engine package produces spark plugs that have their own unique look.
We have to associate what the spark plug looked like on that engine package when all of the conditions are duplicated when that test or reference engine produced it best power and was tuned so that it would not hurt itself.
The soot ring being present, absent or how long the soot ring is
at the base of the porcelain does not tell us anything about the state of tune (power or Air fuel ratio) the engine is experiencing. It only tells is that the spark plug is operating at a temperature that will burn off or not burn off most of fresh mixture that is coming in contact with this very hot surface on the porcelain. If a soot ring is present at the base of the porcelain it is only because that portion of the spark plug is not hot enough to keep the soot burned off.
Summary:
Tune the engine so that if runs well and monitor the spark plug for detonation. An engine that is a highly developed (a design that has all of the bugs worked out) will not usually hurt it self as long as it does not experience detonation. If you are having problems seizing pistons and not experiencing detonation you need to find the design flaws in your engine package. Getting the bugs worked out is usually the responsibility of the engine designer or engine builder. If or when changes are made to the engine package, the person making those changes is responsible for getting the new bugs worked out.