Understood; IMHO, it is in the application.... as usual. My use was in a rally engine; I ended up with a lot of ring drag and, for my use, rapid bore wear (1970's Opel block castings). Now keep in mind, a typically rally is 200-300 miles total, and roughly 80-100 miles of that will be full hammer-down on the engine. 3 such events is like running a full 1/2 mile circle track season in terms of engine use . I seriously doubt that anyone competitive would run a full circle track season on the same rings and pistons.....so I would expect a different view there. And getting that last HP out for rally is not always the best use of time and money; the old truism is that putting 100HP per wheel to the ground is on gravel limits the value of raw HP.
So for rally use, the bore wear was not much of a surprise but it was silly for me to put up with that for little or no benefit, when I don't have to with different rings. Ditto for the street, IMHO. So it gets back, as always, to what the OP is doing with his engine.
