The key to Hasselblad's marketing materials about flash sync—and even more to Phase/Mamiya's "amazing" 1/1600 sync—are those two horrible little words up to.
All the planets have to align for perfect synchronization between flash and camera at those speeds. If the flash duration is longer than the shutter speed, you'll lose light. (And at lower power settings on the D1s in particular, you're likely to be pushing up against that.) If the exposure beginning doesn't perfectly align with the flash firing, you'll lose light. If the radio delay is too long, you'll lose light. Add all of those together and synchronization at fast shutter speeds is a small miracle.
With a Phase One DF with a V-grip Air (which has a built in air transmitter) and Schneider LS lens the flash can in fact sync without light loss at 1/1600th.
As you say you do have to be aware of other factors like flash duration, but e.g. a D1 Air 500 has a flash duration of around 1/1600 starting at one stop from max, so full power from the flash would be seen except at max power at which point nothing bad happens - you just don't see as much light from the strobes as you expect, requiring you to change your metering to in-camera metering (e.g. histogram) rather than a flash meter.
As another reference point the top-grade Profoto gear, Pro-8, have a worst-case flash duration of 1/1600 so can be used at full power synced wirelessly (using the built-in transmitter) at 1/1600 without any loss of light.
Otherwise all the systems I've used in-practice cannot exceed 1/400th without some loss-of-light and 1/640 without significant loss of light.
Doug Peterson
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Head of Technical Services, Capture Integration
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