So, I’m not sure about the legality of this, but you can run the Pal region version of SMB1 at 60 fps (I used the European rom on my NTSC NES and it ran at 60 fps), and it makes Mario’s run speed faster, the countdown timer run out faster at the end of levels, and cutscenes (like the pipe entry cutscene) way faster. Would this be allowed to be used, and if so, could it save time?

That is not allowed for speedruns. Since you have an NTSC NES, you can try getting an NTSC version of SMB1, the ntsc version is definitely more enjoyable to speedrun than the PAL version.

Gotcha. Thanks!