VERY nice motor. I have a massive respect for the Elise/Exige, regardless of whether or not I could live with one.
The question about handling is an interesting one. I personally think that it's also about balance, feel, feedback, agility, ability to deal with different road surfaces etc. What I don't think it's directly about is absolute mechanical grip. Mechanical grip is mainly to do with tyres, though layout of the weight distribution of the car affects that.
In theory you could put really shoddy tyres on an Elise and it would probably still be faster than lardy saloon around a track armed with F1s.
I guess that a good way of considering handling is the ability to exploit the mechanical grip available. Again, picture putting F1s on a Rover 800 and then trying to drive it hard, can't imagine it being that quick despite the grip available.