As previously mentioned, octane rating is a measurement of resistance to detonation. It needs more heat to light off. Burn rate is another story altogether. Race fuels burn faster than pump fuels. Too much octane and not enough heat will lead to an incomplete burn, which is why many of you have gone down in octane and went faster. If you have too much octane for the combination you are running, the chambers and piston tops will not carbon up like they should. I'm not talking 1/4" thick, it's burning oil carbon, but that thin, black to brown coating the tops of the pistons and the chambers get when it's running good.
Here's something for people to think about: do we run race gas so we can have high compression or do we have high compression so we can run race gas?