Work with Fanatec

Hi

I started with a TM T300GT, which I was never quite happy with. I'm a larger guy, 6'3", with I suppose what you'd call the innate strength that goes with the size. There's a lot of personal preference around torque, but I like very high-levels of torque. I drive IndyCars in iRacing primarily, and these cars have no power steering and are known for being brutish to steer. I like to simulate the experience as much as I can without buying a million dollar sim rig.

Needless to say, I never felt that the T300 was anywhere nearly strong enough torque-wise, and usually after the first few laps, it began to fade. No matter how much or how many times I tightened it, I eventually came loose, and always felt a little toy-like to me.

Finally, it gave out, and I was out of the game for nearly a year, as wheels have been hard to come by.

I've been trying to buy a DD2 for the better part of the last 9 months, but it's always been out of stock, the estimated arrival dates slip. I didn't understand how Fanatec was making money, what with seemingly never having any product to sell, but finally, after another slippage (from Feb to March 2022), I noticed they had the DD1 in stock, so I just pulled the trigger. A bird in the hand ... right?

When all was said and done, I got the DD1 base, the ClubSport Formula 2.5X, and the V3 pedals.

I wasn't expecting to be blown away, to be honest. I watched a couple YouBoob videos where some guys were comparing high-end DD's with cheap G29 wheels, and they were saying it didn't improve their times and wasn't a huge difference yada yada.

Well, I've had my Fanatec gear for 2 weeks now, and in my opinion, those guys are full of, well … shit (sorry, it’s all that fits). The way I look at it, I was playing games before. I didn't start "sim racing" until a couple of weeks ago. The difference is just that dramatic. I can finally catch a slide before it progresses to the road pizza phase, and I finally have enough torque to make it an actual challenge to finish a long race. The difference in experience is just massive.

Best of all, I can crank the torque, and it stays at that level for the whole race. I'm using the Fanatec settings for iRacing (the ones linked from Fanalab), except instead of setting a strength of 6, I use 12. I'll gladly sacrifice liveliness for torque, and I can feel traction-loss just fine. Even better, the pedals have FFB too. The pedal FFB is on the mild-side, but it's way better than the non-FFB pedals I had before.