Last month's "How It Works" story gave you the basics of the four-stroke cycle, describing the motion of the intake and exhaust valves in relation to the piston moving up and down in the cylinder.

For years, Chevy's factory-backed Corvette race cars have been delightfully anachronistic, running old-school pushrod V-8 engines with cross-plane crankshafts. But this is the dawn of a new era in ...