Horsepower, schmorshpower!
I wish the almost totally useless concept of horsepower had never been thrust upon us!
TORQUE! That is what we are all really looking for. Horsepower, and kilowatts too I believe, is just a convenient way of getting big numbers from small ones. An S2000 engine makes 200 horsepower at 9000 rpm, that sounds much better than 116 foot pounds of torque. As they say in the car biz, "horsepower sells cars, torque wins races" or alternately "you buy horsepower but you drive torque."
I'm not trying to put down F1 engine technology, on the contrary I think 18,000 RPM engines are just about the coolest thing around. It's just the horsepower figures really don't apply in the real world. That same "275 HP per liter at 18,000 rpm" engine is only making 240 foot pounds of torque. Not so impressive, eh?
My point is, big HP figures at stratospheric RPM's should be taken with a grain of salt.
Sorry about the rant.