That's because there's no such thing as a "performant language". A programming language is inert. It's notation. Programming languages don't get run. Binaries do.
The only thing that can be compared are language implementations. That a given implementation, such as GCC, has an excellent code generator that emits efficient code is saying something about how great that code generator is. It's not that the input language is inherently "performant"; C programs compiled with GCC and Clang are fast. The same program compiled with My Toy C Compiler, with none of the work that has gone into LLVM and the GCC backend, is going to have different runtime characteristics.
The only thing that can be compared are language implementations. That a given implementation, such as GCC, has an excellent code generator that emits efficient code is saying something about how great that code generator is. It's not that the input language is inherently "performant"; C programs compiled with GCC and Clang are fast. The same program compiled with My Toy C Compiler, with none of the work that has gone into LLVM and the GCC backend, is going to have different runtime characteristics.