LAP TIMES AND BANG FOR YOUR BUCK

We don’t award overall credit for lap times in this contest because, as cars such as the Morgan 3 Wheeler and Toyota GT86 have so plainly illustrated in the past, driving fun often has little to do with outright pace.

Had we taken lap times into account, however, the Mégane would have climbed the order. The Renault’s time illustrates what’s evident when you drive it at track pace: that it has big-car performance, outright grip and circuit purpose to burn.

The fight for the remaining lap time podium places was incredibly close, however, and while the Fiesta ST lost out so narrowly, its pace proved conclusively that if you want to go fast on a budget, you needn’t look anywhere else.

The BBR MX-5’S Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2 tyres certainly helped it to a time that the outright performance of its 210bhp engine couldn’t have hit had it been on lesser tyres. The Yaris’s time, conversely, demonstrated the cost of underspeccing the rubber on your affordable performance car.

If getting the biggest bang for your buck matters above all else, the Hyundai i30n asks the least for each of its imperial brake horsepower (£101), narrowly beating the Rénault Megane RS 280 (£105). The priciest thoroughbred horses in the field, meanwhile, at £132 each, were stabled in a place that few would struggle to guess: under the bonnet of the Toyota Yaris GRMN.