I never ran a Novarossi since I do not race my Savages. But alot of buggy guys love the Novarossis and compared to the Chinese engines, the 'Rossis have an edge. In between Italian and Chinese as far as performance is the good 'ole OS V-Spec. Alot of professional RC racers use this engine too. A good gauge as to which engines are professional race gauge, pick up several RC mags and thumb through the race results sections. These usually reveal that the racers in there usually have 'Rossis and OS with some spatterings of Chinese engines.

A warning about Italian engines: They are ezpensive! If you want quality, you might have to shell out $300+. OS will be a little cheaper, abioout mid $200s. Of course, the Chinese are the cheapest. STS is by far the cheapest and provide great power to boot, believe me, I love my D28M for bashing. Nezt up on the list are the SH and its derivatives (also Chinese, the rebadaged are based on SH). These engines will out perform the STS in several key areas: acceleration being the primary one. The problem with the Chinese engines is their materials are not as legendary as OS and Italian engine materials. This is how they are able to mass produce so many of them so cheaply. I cannot remember the aluminum # they use, but I think even the HPI K4.6 uses higher grade materials.

Nezt up are OS. OS in the past never sought performance as much as it did reliability. Not to long ago, they took cues from the Italian engines and began to follow similar timings and other tricks. Check out the race tuned .12TZ and you will see that the sleeve is literally ported straight from the factory. That sleeve is so hogged out that there is no room to do any more porting.

Nezt up are the 'Rossis. These engines are high grade and unfortunately high dollar. Since these engines are milled so closely to factory specs (one of the factors for their high cost), they are essentialy blueprinted from the factory. Where the other engines would require "modding" to blue print them since their milling and casting processes are not so ezact, the Rossis are near design perfect. This "blueprinting" from the factory is what gives epert drivers, whose racing skills are so nearly even, the critical edge over another engine that is not anywhere close to its design specs.

As far as HP and torque outputs, do not go by them. The advertised HP is total BS and is a poor measure of performace since the companies inflated those numbers just to sell more engines. I believe LRP (an SH derivative) advertises 3.8HP! Thats is rediculous! Don't get me wrong, OS has fallen into the same trap. OS advertises its .18TZ to produce 2.2HP! Now that I think of it, I am wondering what test conditions Steve Pond used to produce these numbers and if it is possible to reproduce this on another dyno.

As far as seeking an engine with great power where you need it, totally disregard peak HP and torque numbers. Only look at the shape of the torque curve. If the torque curve is a nice dome shape with a long plateau, this is what you want. If the torque curve is a spikey peak, this is useless; stay away from this engine unless you are particularly good at keepoing the engine in such a narrow RPM band.