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Ok, my take on this (if that's worth anything, heh heh)
Just look at the service manual for your car and it will have the reccomended oil change schedule. Usually they have two oil change/maintenance schedules: regular and severe. For the regualr interval it can be 5000 miles or 7500 miles. For the severe it is almost always 3000 miles. Severe useage is racing (of course), lots of stop and go driving, not driving the car long enough to get the oil heated up to burn off contaminants, blah blah. You have to use your judgement as to how much you've done "severe" driving to warrant an oil change at an earlier interval.
Following the reccomended maintenance schedule should be fine, because if a huge car company put in an oil change interval that was too long and customers lost engines while following it, I'm sure they could be held liable for gving customers incorrect maintenance information (gotta love lawyers  )
And, some cars (like BMWs) say DO NOT change the oil in the car when you first buy it for 7k or even 10k miles. This is not because it has "break in oil" in the engine (that kind of stuff went out in the 60s or 70s, because of modern engines and probably more importantly modern oils you don't need to worry about that despite what a bunch of fat 50+ mechanics and racers who are still stuck in the past might tell you). The reason why is the German engines are built "too tight" (typical anal retentive Germans, built to too close a tolerance standard) and you need to let the engine wear just a little bit to make sure the rings seal properly. (that's why a lot of times a German engine doesn't start to get interesting and make the power it should until 70k miles or so, it hasn't worn in enough) When peole changed the oil too soon, they had problems with their car because they didn't follow the engine schedule in the manual properly that said "don't change oil for 7k miles when you first buy the car".
The more you beat on the car the sooner you'll need to change the oil. If you use your car for highway driving only and you're just crusing from point A to point B, then you can defenitely use the regular interval. We had one car in my family, it only saw highway miles and the oil was changed in it every 7500 miles, and that engine ran fine until the car was sold at 175K miles.
If you've got a turbo, you'll defenitely have to change oil more often. The proof? Look at the service manual for an Eclipse (I still have mine, naturally). They have THREE maintenance schedules: regualr, turbocharged cars, and severe useage. The oil change interval is 6K miles (I think) for regualr, 4.5K ffor turbo (driving like you would under "regualr") and 3k miles under severe.
As for synthetic, it can take more abuse, so you can go longer with it, but I wouldn't go OVER the max reccomended in a service manual (such as that 7500 mile figure) and if you are really treating the car hard (i.e. turboed with 300+ hp and you hit 20 psi of boost about a dozen times every day you drive it, racing the car, etc etc) then every 3k miles just to be sure. I mean, it's your modded car and you're beating the crap out of it, it's going to need more maintenance.
When it's the winter and I'm not racing, I change the synthetic oil in my car at around 4K miles or so (IF I put that many miles on it, in the winter I don't drive it much) and when racing 3K miles just to be sure (but again, I don't put many miles on it so it's not too often and it doesn't hurt the wallet too much).
The synthetic is good insurance if you go a little long (a little isn't 8k miles) on when you are supposed to change oil, unless that is what you are supposed to usein your car (live Vettes, which are supposed to use synthetic oil). "Tutto fa brodo."
Todd Scungio
98 RS
15.173 @ 90.70 MPH
And also a 2011 Ralliart
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