How fuel can have octane ratings higher than 100, and whats the deal with race fuels?
Well, that brings us to fuels that are rated above 100 octane (how can anything contain more than 100% of something else?). Fuels rated above 100 octane contain compounds which behave as if they had more than 100% octane — because there are other compounds that are even more resistant to predetonation and preignition. These fuels also usually contain some form of oxygenator (TANE, MTBE, etc) which frees extra oxygen from the fuel to mix into the reaction at time of detonation. This effectively does increase the combustion pressure levels, which should result in *slight* increases in total power output — not because of the extra predetonation or preignition protection, but specifically because of the extra oxygen coming into the equation. This is basically a weak version of the same thing that happens when you spray nitrous oxide (NOx) into your engine; the nitrogen is neutral and the extra oxygen adds to the power output rate. If you could design a filter to filter out only pure oxyg
