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An internal combustion engine uses controlled explosions. For an explosion you need a fuel, oxidizer and heat. Or in other words: Gasoline in a vacuum doesn’t explode (or burn). You have to add the right amount of oxidizer and provide heat (in the form of a spark, that’s what spark plugs are for). When you set gasoline on fire you use the oxygen from ambient air as oxidizer. Air is 78% nitrogen (N₂) and 21% oxygen (O₂) by volume. Nitrogen doesn’t react with the fuel and is pretty useless.
The more fuel you can burn, the more powerful your explosion. But to burn more fuel you need more oxidizer. Modern cars use turbochargers to compress air and force it into the engine. The disadvantage here is that 78% of it will still be nitrogen.
An obvious solution would be to get a bottle of pure oxygen and use that instead of the surrounding air. I’m not really sure why that’s not done for cars but apparently oxygen is much harder to store and handle than nitrous oxygen (NOS, N₂O). NOS still contains nitrogen but is a more powerful oxidiser than air. In addition it’s liquid under relatively low pressure and room temperature, giving you a very dense (-> powerful) oxidiser.
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