[AaronM]

All else being equal, RWD will handle better.

The reason is this: Tires have a finite amount of traction available to them. In a FWD design, the front tires must split their traction between propulsion and lateral traction. I know that the rears need to have some lateral traction to keep the back end in line, but the vast majority of the lateral traction is needed by the front (i.e. steering) wheels because they impart the force that causes the car to change direction. When this traction has to be split and used with propulsion as well, you lessen the available traction for both.

With RWD, the rear wheels can devote essentially all their traction to pushing the car forward while the fronts can devote all their traction to directional changes. Essentially with RWD you are distributing the traction load across all four tires in a more even fashion, while in FWD you are depending on only two tires. Even a FWD car with 50/50 weight distribution will understeer more (or oversteer less) than a RWD car because of this.

Your friend is right that FWD cars tend to be harder to spin out, especially in late braking because they understeer. But that's a driver limitation and not a really a benefit as almost all professional race drivers prefer to have their car set up for a little bit of oversteer.