For those following along, that quote comes from this article.
https://www.caranddriver.com/feature...d-tires-tested
Intended usage plays a large role in size and tire selection. Since this Lateral-G I will assume there is at least some autocross and track time in the future.
I want to address the economy thing. It does take more energy to get a heavier wheel and tire package rolling......but you aren't driving a VW with a 2.5l 4 cylinder either, without even trying, you have twice as much torque available. There was a 10% mileage difference between the 15 and 19 setups. A portion of that mileage change should be attributed to the width of the tire, rolling resistance matters. If you are truly concerned enough about mileage that it is guiding your wheel size selection, why are we talking about 10" wide wheels. It was a 5% difference between 17 and 18....on a VW.
So smaller diameter wheels accelerate and stop faster, in general that is true. Especially in that case where they able to use the same tire model for the whole test with all of the gains coming from keeping most of the mass of the rim close to the center of the wheel. Compound and tire design is more important than size and here in the pro touring land, there are two tire models that matter if you want to be fast and the widest 17 available is 255. A 275/35-18 will be faster than a 255/40-17 on a 10 on a typical pro touring Camaro. If you decide to open up to not being on the fastest rubber and using your rear tire for example you get one more tire to pick from that is sort of okay. Past that, we can find decent tires that will fit your size requirements but the minor gain you picked up in acceleration was negated ten fold by being on a slower tire.
If you don't care to run at the top of the list, that's fine and 17s may be the better choice for you.......but 17s are not the best.