[fieldodreams79]

Fuel mileage used to be dependent on how big your "tank" was:

https://www.carthrottle.com/post/7-h...rk-of-one-man/

Smokey might have lived in the grey area of the rule book, but he always maintained that he followed the rules when they were clear. As such, when the size of the fuel tank became regulated in Nascar, Smokey duly obliged by installing a regulation-sized fuel tank.

However, there was no regulation on the size of the fuel line. Obviously, it didn’t take Smokey very long to capitalize on that non-rule. He made a fuel line that was two inches wide and 11 feet long, closer in dimension to an anaconda than a fuel line. Although it sounds pretty funny, the monster fuel line held an extra 5 gallons of gasoline, which made a very real difference on the track (until it was banned, of course).

One of Smokey’s most well-known incidents involved shoving an inflated basketball into an oversized fuel tank before the car was inspected by scrutineers. When they filled the tank up with fuel, the tank would appear to conform to regulations. After passing inspection, Smokey would then deflate the ball, pull it out of the tank, and fill the regulation-plus-basketball-sized fuel tank for the race. Amazingly, nothing in the rules at the time said this was illegal.