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I've been driving manual cars for ... a long long long time.
I can shift smoother in more situations than an automatic, i can go to the edge of acceleration and do partial burn outs where the tires are just starting to squall. You can't get that kind of fine tuning without the clutch.
Since the direct inputs of a good clutch are control you can slide the rear end of a high performance car around using the clutch and down shifting (rear wheel drive of course). Great for auto cross.
A high performance car with a manual transmission on twisties will easily out perform an automatic equipped car if driving on the edge. I'm talking about a lot more control than just drifting.
The requisite skill of driving a manual transmission takes years of experience to get out on the edge but you end up controlling the entire drive train versus the fuel system and brakes with an automatic. With a manual "YOU" get to look ahead and set the drive train up for what is coming next proactively versus responding with an automatic transmission that is only taking into account a few variables.
When you can define the task at hand very narrowly like with drag racing you can limit the variables significantly and an automatic transmission will make sense (I though you can imagine disagree). Some guys in auto cross disagree with me and say automatic all the way since they can't imagine feathering a clutch to capture a little more traction without giving up RPM's and horse power.
Then again it all comes down to traction pies and drag coefficients and how you want to spend the different forces getting from point a to point b. Once they release some spec data on weighting of the car (60/40, 55/45?) and if they stick that short ratio six speed in the car will be a runner. Manual or automatic? Depends on where you want to go.
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