Oh really?! I said my statement was oversimplified. Not all groups have the same requirements. NASA Spec is very regulated for instance... But I knew a comment like this was coming, so as someone who grew up with a family race team, has a race car, and builds a motorsports app. Shut up.
In National Stock Car Racing the cars are all nominally equal, that’s far from the case in F1 where some years a single competitor dominates partially from having chosen a superior technological implementation.
I don't really follow NASCAR, but from listening to my (huge fan) father-in-law, that word is doing some work. His best (or, at least, my favorite) are the creative ways teams find to bend the rules - or blatantly cheat! - to give their cars an advantage.
One that made me laugh: a team once packed their suspension tubes with lead shot to make minimum weight. On the first lap the driver pulled a lever that dropped all the shot onto the track, and then enjoyed an underweight car for the rest of the race! They're always looking for "legitimate" optimizations, too.
My eyes being rolling faster than my crank...