First, Buy a FORD. (Sorry I couldn't resist, Just Kidding)
Second, Learn your Car and Learn to drive (or better yet feel) your car. Shit-can the dirty tricks and pay your dues on the track. I know it's not the answer you were looking for but sometimes you gotta learn to get beat before you can win. I had the great fortune to see the legends of drag racing up close and personal during the hay-day of real ingenuity (late 60s thru the 70s) When practice, skill, preparation, and a drive to win where the only real things the drivers could count on. When I was growing up my father owned a pretty infamous Top-Fuel and Performance Fabrication and Machine shop. We made and built everything from the ground up the old fashion way. When National events where in town we were open 24 hours and let the crews and driver use our machine shop for what ever they needed. Sometimes it was to machine blocks and cast new intakes and sometimes to sleep on the couch in the upstairs office. Back then it wasn't uncommon to see our shop lot full of the old pick-ups and RVs of Don Garlitz, Bob Glidden, Shirley Moldowney, Don Prudhomme, Connie Kaletta, etc., etc., etc. It wasn't uncommon to see these folks dragging all the tools they owned in the back of the truck and a top fuel dragster hooked to the truck by way of a Tow-Bar. They would drive half way across the country JUST FOR THE CHANCE TO RACE. Although they were just some drivers and grease monkey mechanics back then when I was a dirty faced kid hanging around my old man's shop listening to all there funny stories and off handed smart ass comments. I got a big kick out being there watching them work and seeing first hand their winning strategies. What made them legends isn't the fact that they won, but how they won. There were a lot of drivers using cheap parlor tricks back then too but, you’ve never heard of THEIR names, and I can't Remember THEIR names.