[Power Hungry]

One other thing to consider is that to a certain point, higher octane isn't going to make any further improvements. The concept of octane ratings has more to do with compression and cylinder pressures.

Consider that timing will only get you so far because the combustion process needs to occur at a point where maximum pressure will begin to push the piston down. Any earlier and you end up fighting the piston on the way up. Once you reach a peak point, you can probably swing 2-3 degrees without much difference in performance which is why we will often tune for peak power and then back off 1-2 degrees for margin of safety. It just happens that on most vehicles, the peak timing point and cylinder pressure is just a bit more than the octane rating of the some fuels will allow. This is why we run higher octane fuels... to get the timing to the peak curve.

Now once your at the peak curve, the only way to get more performance is to begin increasing the compression ratio. Again, octane plays an important part in preventing detonation under higher cylinder pressures and higher octane fuels allow higher compression ratios.

So basically, you could tune for the highest timing that makes power and then run the lowest octane fuel possible while avoiding detonation. This, however, is not an ideal practice since detonation points can change in relation to many environmental influences, especially heat.

If timing changes aren't providing any further performance, then your timing curve is where it probably it needs to be and you might want to see how different fuels affect performance.

Hope this makes sense.