RE: What's that smell?
Methanol has no oder, nitro has a faint almond oder. Some full scale racing oil are castor or a blend of castor and other oils so that may be what your friend smelled. I once had a friend who thought nitro smelled like a cross between burned rubber and bleach. I had to explain to him that (back then) they put a puddle of water, bleach, and rosin for the tires to burn through. Thus cleaning them and heating them. That is what he smelled. You can smell the nitro if you go in the pits of the fuel dragsters and funny cars. They do not smell like our castor based fuel burning. Our synthetic oil smells a bit like castor as well.