Welcome to our PCOTY track notes. These are the stream-of-consciousness scrawlings from our resident hot shoe, editor-at-large Jethro Bovingdon, following his hot-lap sessions in each contender:

There are many bad things to say about the Integra… but luckily they pretty much exclusively center around the seats! Type R seats are always so good, but the chairs fitted to the Integra don’t offer anywhere near enough support. Weird that Honda, ahem, Acura (still sounds weird all these years later to my European ears) would get this wrong.

However, they got so much right. The gearbox is simply joyous, the 2-liter turbocharged engine is strong and still loves to rev right out in time-honored Honda (oh, whatever!) tradition. The chassis has superb poise too, strong traction, and a real appetite for the race track. It’s so neat and precise, the front end absolutely nailed to each apex and the way the front-diff hooks up just when you fear the car might slip into understeer is surreal and very satisfying.

For me, the steering is too heavy in Sport mode and a little bit dead, too. The previous-gen Civic Type R was better in that regard. Plus, I’d like just a slightly more aggressive shift in balance off-throttle – to bring the rear of the car more into play. But the Type S is very impressive and feels like a quality item.

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About PCOTY hot laps:

Our lap times are simple. They are meant to inform us about how these cars perform on track, not to chase an elusive or ‘ultimate’ time that would require multiple sessions in each car. The laps were set after just a few sighting laps and no prior experience on the circuit. Unless a car didn’t get a fair shake, we did one out lap, three hot laps, and a cool-down. Whilst all the cars could go quicker, the times are representative. The delta between the cars would be consistent even with many more laps and sets of tires to burn through.