"Smoke and mirrors"? C'mon, Jim. Admit it when someone knows more than you. I have scarcely started to learn what Brent's been doing for many years. And I do have a couple of good mentors. It's amazing how many people are willing to teach those who are willing to listen and learn.

Some of the racing fuels are for sanctioned classes to reduce the number of variables, making tuning even more critical.

If you've ever read of the history of gasoline engines and the development of gasolines, you'll learn that up through the 1930s U.S. auto gasoline was about 40 (yes, 40) octane. If you put 87 octane in a Model T, does it go much faster? No. Does it knock less? No, since the compression is too low to knock at all. But with "higher octane" fuel you could rebuild and retune that engine to run a higher compression ratio, which would allow more power to be extracted from the fuel, which would allow the vehicle to go faster up to its mechanical safety limits.