Horsepower

[shatto]

If the coil packs on each of the spark plugs of a modern engine are used because they are better than a distributor.........

And, if fuel injection is superior to carburetors......

Why don't race car engines use them?

[ShadowLegion]

Well, actually that depends on what race cars you are talking about. NASCAR is switching to fuel injection next year, if I'm not mistaken, and I think the touring cars in Europe and Austrailia have been using factory fuel injection set ups for years. The problem with it mainly is that it is so expensive to set up for race cars. Back when Accel came out with their Digital Fuel Injection system it was insanely expensive, but it was tuneable and you could make tons of power as long as you didn't exceed the softwares' capabilities. I remember tuning my old 5.0L Mustang with a laptop (actually it was a 347 stroker), and I think there were something like a couple dozen or more reference points that could be adjusted, and that was just the factory Ford computer. Take NHRA Pro Stock cars. In order to make the kind of power they are making (roughly 1400 horsepower out of 500 cubic inches) with a carburetor, they would have to have 8 injectors that individually cost the same as 1 carb. So it's mainly an expense issue and implementation issue. The hot thing these days are turbos, and those are all FI cars.