Many years ago there was a catamaran that was home made from ply called the Mosquito. In its original form it came out cat rigged sailed one up. Very soon a few people decided that they liked sailing with a second person (why I'll never know) so they fitted a jib to the mozzie and swung a second trapeze and away they went. Well this was fine but in those early days they were never as fast around the course as the cat rigged, one up mossies (the more experienced sailors were on the cat rigged at that time). They didn't like this so they fiddled and fiddled with the rig etc and pushed and pushed more and more around the course and after a few seasons no one could tell if one was faster than the other (except the sloops found that their hulls had to be redesigned several times to stop the bows pulling off due to the much greater loads on them with two people and a jib on a low bridle and this tended to make the sloops a slightly heavier boat) Then over many years of sailing the honours of which form is fastest between the cats and the sloops has gone back and forth from one to the other. The faster form of the Mosquito has never depended on which configuration it has been sailed in but the numbers of sailors and the quality and competition between those sailors, in which ever configuration they sailed, that has determined in which form the mozzie is fastest in (at the present time)
I would venture to say that if a group of really competitive sailors, competing against each other week in and week out on F16's in only cat configuration (and they stayed only in that configuration ), they will very soon match and surpass the boats sailing sloop rigged. The boats in either form are so close in potential performance to each other that it will be the quality of the sailors on the boats that will determine in which form the boats are fastest (AT ANY GIVEN POINT IN TIME)