You "manual is better" folks are aware that the ONLY reason race cars run a "manual" is because they prohibit a full sequential tranny in the class they run?
Now a days, it is not about power. It is about how fast can you mash the gears and how easy is it to change gearing in the tranny. A sequential will ALWAYS be king in this regards. Manual tranny are a band-aid for the team since they are not allowed to run what they really want which is a full sequential transmission.
auto/manual is only a concern for us that can not afford to flip 10k for a barebone seq transmission.