New TT’s looks aren’t as dramatic as the original’s, but they’re still a selling point. (Autocar photo) » More Photos

It’s a wide, wet, uphill bend that reveals a little TT S secret that’s somewhat less palatable. We’re bearing down on a longish, tightish, second-gear curve that widens satisfyingly on the exit, allowing you to feed more urge through the tires and spear towards the next turn.

It’s the first section that’s sharpest and the Audi obediently noses towards the early apex, after which I can feed in plenty more of the extra torque. Or so I think. Shortly after the extra effort is summoned it’s stifled again as the TT S’s ESP throttles the engine and brakes the odd wheel. And to good effect, it’s true, for our trajectory is safely rerouted.

But this is a bit of a surprise from a quattro-equipped TT, which you might expect to dispatch this bend with more alacrity. I get multiple chances to tackle this corner again because we’re snapping the TT here, so I alter the ESP’s setting; a brief button stab allows more slippage under power.

So the bend is charged again; the TT’s nose turns but is soon pushed wide with understeer as the front-heavy balance of this car (58 percent of its weight sits on the front axle) and the nominal 50/50 torque split force it wide under power. But when you lift off – a response that does not, happily, threaten to send the tail into a spin – the Audi quickly settles and, a little unexpectedly, squats its rear end and slingshots out of the corner with impressive conviction as you re-apply the power.

"The TT S doesn’t have the fine balance that four-wheel drive should offer." (Autocar photo) » More Photos

It’s as if the Haldex clutch has woken up to the need to send a lot more torque aft, and does a very effective job of it, but too late to take real advantage of the car’s four-wheel drive hardware. Turning off the ESP altogether allows this sequence to be experienced without any power cuts or brakings of wheels at all, of course. This makes the business a little smoother, but you still need to lift to bring the nose back in and we wouldn’t recommend this for anything but the track.

All of which means that on wet, tight roads this TT is a somewhat curious device to conduct if you’re driving it hard, making less-than-fluent progress if you’re trying to go flat out. Back off a little, or drive it in the dry, and you will very rarely experience this behavior, but its appearance is a little disappointing, especially as this is a new iteration of Haldex transmission with a faster-acting electric pump rather than previous hydraulic device. The bottom line is that this quattro TT S doesn’t quite have the fine-tuned chassis balance that four-wheel drive ought to offer.

One issue the quattro system has certainly dealt with is traction; the standard 2.0-liter Audi is well able to spin its front wheels (the only pair driven) if you switch off the traction control. Were it not for some electronic intervention, that version of the TT would arguably be putting too much energy through the front wheels, though it’s to the chassis’s great credit that there’s almost never any torque steer.

But adding another 71hp and 51lb ft to the mix, as this TT S version does, really would be too much, so it’s good to see that the model comes with four-wheel drive as standard. The TT S’s four-pot unit turns out more power, and torque, than the 247hp 3.2-liter V6, too.