TRACK CAR OF THE YEAR

From hot hatches to flyweight sports cars to actual racers, 15 contenders vie to be crowned evo Track Car of the Year 2024

- JAMES TAYLOR  , John Barker

FIFTEEN CARS SQUEEZED INTO CADWELL PARK'S tree-shaded assembly area: hatchbacks, saloons, roadsters, sports cars with and without roofs (and doors), rare exotica and down-to-earth affordable heroes. All of the cars in this line-up are purposely very different to reflect just how broad the world of performance cars is, but each of them would be right at home at an evo trackday. The winner will not be the fastest car around the lap, but the one that feels the most enjoyable, exploitable and genuinely thrilling.

If the performance car world is a broad church, then the world of track driving is, ostensibly, a narrower one. But it's a fascinating one nonetheless. You can learn things about a car on a track that you simply can't on the road, and to experience a car in the no-limits environment of a circuit is a very particular, distilled expression of The Thrill of Driving.

There's also a certain fascination in discovering what a car can ultimately do on a circuit.

Although this isn't a test of which is quickest, we will set lap times in every car. Apart from being interesting to know exactly where they all stand, pushing a car to set a time may reveal further facets of its character that driving at seven or eight tenths would not. Nonetheless, this test is more about tactility, involvement, balance, feedback at the limit, and above all-fun, than outright pace.

Our reigning eCoty champ is back for TCoty. We already know that the Porsche 911 GT3 RS is phenomenal on track from our time at its Silverstone launch (and unexpectedly brilliant on the road from its evo Car of the Year win last year).

So it's back as a known quantity: we'll lap it first to function as a benchmark for the other cars of all shapes and sizes. It'll be interesting, too, to see how this big-downforce car translates to Cadwell Park's narrow confines.