"He was using them in Indy cars, and told me to give them a try in our stock cars," says Elliott, owner of HM Elliott Custom Precision Coatings in Mooresville, North Carolina.  "I ran those bearings in the Southern 500 and after 500 miles, they looked like new."  Clearly, he was on to something.

     As the engine builder for Rusty Wallace's 1989 Championship team, Elliott knows not all horsepower is found in the engine.  "A 700-horsepower engine on the dyno only has 450 horsepower when you shut the hood," he says.  "The rest is lost in the drivetrain."  So for more than two decades Elliott has been developing methods of finding some of that lost horsepower.

     Coating accomplishes three things: heat dissipation, lubrication and oil shedding.  "By ceramic coating the tops of the pistons, engines can run leaner [less fuel], which means more horsepower and better gas mileage," he says.  Teflon-coating parts such as the crankshaft, transmission gears, and the ring and pinion sheds excess oil and eliminates rotational mass.

     "Twenty years ago, Elliott stumbled across another breakthrough by accident.  "We were in a rush getting Rusty's car ready for qualifying, and forgot to put lubricant in the rear end, which had been coated," he says.  "Well, we set a record and won the pole, and only later did we realize that we forgot the fluid in the rear end.

     "Today I promote running the lightest oils possible in a Teflon-coated engine, transmission and rear end, because race cars run cooler and stronger."  Total cost to coat all the essential drivetrain parts in a NASCAR Nextel Cup car?  About $2000.