As far as I know, Laravel isn't too focus on performance but easiness/fast-development (which is quite nice). If you want performance, go with Phalcon or anything else but PHP.

I just wonder if it's not possible to optimize some things.. Like the MailServiceProvider, disabling this in config/app.php means 40+ less files are being included if you want mail functionality.. 40+ files are being included on every pageview for mailing, even if 95% of the pages don't need it.. That seems.. excessive?? Memory usage drops 15% after disabling it. Why is this loaded on every pageview and not when its requested?

(On that note, why are there still some swift files included even if you disable the mailserviceprovider and it's facade)?