^^^ Yes and in addition whilst I'm not sure how much it really affects longevity (given that a lot of race motors suffer from other breakages in the interim) even building a "bulletproof" engine doesn't guarantee there are no maintenance issues down the road. Some people spend a lot of money building really strong 2.3 stroker engines (who me? /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/hsugh.gif) and yet that means more wear on the cylinder walls due to the more elliptical piston travel meaning shorter periods/mileages before a rebore/hone and the next sized pistons are required.
I've said this a dozen times before but if I ever did another "serious" engine build it would be a 2.4 sleeved block using stock EVO pistons on 6mm longer rods to compensate for the extra deck height. 9.0:1 CR or thereabouts and an easy 9,000 rpms redline. It's a perfect street car combo in my opinion but the OP is building a track car so this might be a bit irrelevant for him. I just mention it because he asked about longevity. I don't have much faith in Slowboy as a company, nothing personal, just too many stories of bad experiences from others. However they did a really good thread on another forum about the benefits of long rod 2.0 litre engines. They posted dyno sheets of cars with fantastic torque curves, making almost 500 horsepower at the same time. Depending on turbo size they were seeing full spool (if I recall correctly) by about 4500-5000 rpm and then pretty much 'flatlining' the torque curve to 8.5K where they said power dropped off when they took their foot off the throttle. I'm not really a fan of big turbos in Hong Kong, I've found the 16G sized turbos to be pretty suitable for the sort of driving I do. Consequently, I'm not sure I'd ever get those type of results because a stock sized turbo would become a restriction at higher rpm. The FP Black on the other hand? I bet that would be an ideal candidate for a long rod engine.
The whole thread is here if you are interested and makes a good read for the pros and cons of a lot of different engine configurations: -
Advantages of a 2.1 stroker
Another thread that might be worth taking a look at, is this one: -
A different engine configuration ...
It's good because it is full of solid information, sensible opinions and constructive criticism, which helps sort out the facts from the bullshit.
I still think for me personally, a sleeved 2.4 long block engine would work extremely well, given the type of driving I do here in Hong Kong, but it 'is' a lot of money to spend on an engine for rather minimal gains. Then again, you could say the same of extrude honing intake manifolds and plenty of very knowledgeable people still do that ...