IMHO anytime you stress a working mechanical item it takes effort.
IMHO putting stress on a working clutch takes rotating effort which could be used for something else, mainly rotating your axle gear.
Do you want to use effort stressing your clutch with a big lever when a smaller lever could be used while it's rotating?
answer IMHO: no
That is why wrong or right I used mini gears on our UAS jackshaft instead of larger gears.
It was eight use a 12 or15 or use an (I think it was) use a 17 or 19 on the clutch.
We also only needed to use 31 links of chain and could either run our jackshaft output chain on the left with the power take-off of the engine on the right or run our jackshaft output chain on the right with the power take-off from the engine on the left.
Same jackshaft setup for either yammi or K30.
IMHO we stressed our clutchless and increased the stress pulling on the top of our axle gear.
There was enough stress pulling forward and down put on the top or our axle gear mounted on our aluminum axle, to both steer our RR out in the front like in a zero turn mower and to also get some camber gain on the RR tire.
We twisted and pulled our aluminum axle forward in the center an inch to an inch and a half.
Without the smaller clutch driver diameter, it would have put too much twisting stress from the angled chain on the clutch.
It worked better and better as our axle heated up from being twisted gaining more and more RR steering and camber gain as the race went along.
I eventually had to move the brake caliper from in front of the brake disk to behind it to keep the brake rotor from grinding on the caliper.
As Al alluded to in the second post on here, where's all the chatter about the gains from the experience of using larger gears to maintain momentum?
The magic of all racing is top speed versus acceleration.
If what you race can't pound out hp up top then you have to go for torque on the bottom thru gearing and that's the way it has always been.
It's not about top-end hp or bottom-end torque, it's about the total application your putting on what the track has to offer.
I can and will guarantee you the hot-shoes with the mini gears are also better at doing their turning and deceleration while going uphill and their straight racing and acceleration while going downhill, than most.