alt Hacker NewsAnyone that's into auto racing as a hobby will tell you the engine is the last thing you should modify unless your whole goal is to get into the guts of engine mechanics.
But if you just want to improve lap times it's way less of a priority than brakes, tires, suspension setup, cooling to keep everything happy, etc.
I'm not a car guy but would it be fair to see that your maximum possible performance is bounded by the engine, but the average performance gains are from tuning the rest of the vehicle?
Kind of like if your RAM has to constantly page, you would see much more improvement from upgrading your RAM than overclocking your CPU?