No wonder a superchips replacement chip with advanced timing did so well on our engine. It will start out by destroying your piston rings, then bend rods, and finally punch a hole right through the piston, as I've seen when people run nitrous and don't let off when pinging occurs. You try compressing an explosion at 6000 rpm some time. Timing advance, fires the plug before the piston is at TDC, but sooner. The faster the piston is moving up and down, the more the timing must be advanced to keep up, so that the explosion isn't happening while the piston is already travelling down.
Gasoline only burns so fast.
Octane, is a measurement of the volatility of fuel. The lower number, the more volatile it is, and the faster it explodes. So the key, is to advance the timing just to the verge of pinging. The key really, is to run the timing to the type of fuel your using. But ford didn't design the ZX2 to run on Ultra-94 or Premium 92.