A webfont is discovered only after the CSS that references it has downloaded and parsed, which is late. Preloading moves the request to the start and removes a round trip from first text paint.
Impact is importance multiplied by the confidence tier’s weight — SPECIFICATION 1.0, RESEARCH 0.7, EMERGING 0.3, EXPERIMENTAL 0.1. Two rules backed by the same class of evidence therefore always carry the same weight, which is what makes the score reproducible rather than hand-tuned.