Yeah there's any number of ways you could explain it, perhaps the Soviets deliberately hit the fuel truck first because it's a higher priority target and the OC of the Soviets got a little too excited about nailing that target, trusting the T-90s to take care of any protection it had.
Maybe all the US vehicles were meant to be hit simultaneously but slow reactions on the part of the T-90 crews aiming at the M1s meant that the softskins got hit but the armour got near misses.
With the scenario above, maybe the M1s did get hit but the rounds were unable to penetrate.
It could be that the ambush site wasn't particularly good and the Soviets couldn't get a clear line of sight to the tanks but could easily see the softskins.
Perhaps the Soviets had an infantry unit to initiate the ambush and they hit the fuel truck because they only had an RPG-7 and didn't think they could kill the M1 with it.
Maybe the fuel truck simply ended up being where a T-90 gunner expected one of the M1s to be.
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