All my cars hit redline daily. Usually multiple times daily. All my cars have over 200,000 original-engine miles (Max has 250,000 and the motor is NOT stopping any time soon).Exercise is good for you. Of course if you're not healthy it can also kill you. Same applies to cars. If you car is otherwise healthy, the brief redline sprint now and then is not going to hurt anything and can in fact be beneficial.
Sustained high revs are harmful, though. Street car engines aren't designed to maintain good lubrication at sustained high revs. Some Nissan engines in particular are known for not being able to return oil to the pan as fast as they drain it at sustained high revs which leads to bottom end damage. Also, street car water pumps aren't designed to operate well at sustained high revs. Coolant system performance suffers at high revs, when the most heat is being made.
Autocross will be fine. The races are very short and you won't be at redline long enough to do damage. Just make sure you aren't low on oil (ideally new oil) and your car has been cared for properly.
boxcarbill wrote:Mine hasn't been over 4k yet and probably never. Wanna achieve oil burner before 100k miles? Keep the revs up, it'll do it.
Actually, this is not true at all. In fact one of the SOLUTIONS for the oil burning problem with their early VK-series V8s was to push the motors HARDER during the break-in period to seat the rings better.My cars get driven HARD. But I keep them conditioned for it with regular basic maintenance. My 250,000 mile VG30 does not burn a single drop of oil. And that car saw multiple redline runs PER DAY for years. High revs won't hurt anything unless you're mistreating the engine in some other way that's making it vulnerable. Sure if you drive around in 1st gear all the time at 6000 rpm without stopping something will go wrong. But bumping redline between shifts and even driving at redline on a track for a few seconds isn't going to hurt anything.