How will high end sim racing pedals improve my laptimes?

In this article, we’re looking at how the higher end, hydraulic and load cell based sim racing pedals improve the consistency and pace of your driving and we’ll compare our two favourites: the Heusinkveld Sprint vs the Heusinkveld Ultimate pedals.

One of, if not the most important components of your sim racing setup is the pedals. So much of the approach into a corner is determined by your brake trace (the way you apply pressure and reduce pressure as you enter a corner or “trail braking”). The speed in the exit of a corner is determined by your use of the throttle, too much throttle and you’ll oversteer, not enough, you’ll be slow out!

How do pedal inputs affect laptime?

The brake data-trace shown below compares two brake pressure traces into the same corner. In red, a professional driver and in blue, a student driver. The pro brakes later and harder and trails off in a smoother fashion. Even though entry speed is similar, the professional driver is using all of the grip available, braking later and trailing for longer which equates to an advantage of two-tenths of a second:

While this technique is difficult, it is absolutely the key to faster lap times. Get any of this wrong, and you’ll be off the pace or worse, you’ll crash out.

What separates sim racing from real-world track driving (in my humble opinion) is that you can get actually away more with less pedal accuracy on a real circuit in a real car.

Real cars are generally a lot more forgiving of stabby throttle use or clumsy braking, with the only penalty being that you’ll be slow, destroy your tyres and overheat your brakes.

Sim racing is quite different, the tyre models, particularly in iRacing are so sensitive that even a tiny mistake on the pedals will leave you spinning.

iRacing is so competitive at high field strengths that ultra-accurate driving is paramount to a competitive lap time.

If you want to be a fast sim racer you have to get everything absolutely correct almost 100% of the time. It’s hard to do, which is why only a handful of drivers ever make it to pro driver status. Obviously, this is true in competitive Motorsport, it’s just that mistakes tend to carry less of a penalty in the real world.

So if accuracy and control are critical, lower budget potentiometer based pedals are generally not ideal. That’s not to say you can’t be fast on Thrustmaster T-LCM pedals, a lot of well regarded eSports drivers are using them. But, it is an acquired skill to drive a car accurately on lower-end budget equipment, and the technique is less like the one you might use in a real car.

Not all of us can dedicate 10 hours a day to mastering our lap times like a pro eSports driver can, which means any pedal set that can help give you a lifelike response to your inputs is by nature, going to help you improve considerably faster.

If you’re a serious sim racing hobbyist like me, or perhaps you’ve worn out your Logitech G29’s and you’re in the process of a big upgrade, the next step is to consider the amount of realism you want from your simulator. Load cell pedals are best, ideally with hydraulic dampers, pre-load settings, adjustable geometry and stiffness.

This article assumes that you own Fanatec, Thrustmaster or Logitech equipment and you’re looking for more. Or, it assumes that you’ve already decided that you’re making a choice between Heusinkveld Sprints or Ultimates.

Either way, you want to know what the impact might be on your driving and whether the Ultimates over the Sprints would present a significant enough benefit to be worth the additional budget.

Heusinkveld Sim Pedals Sprint

Heusinkveld Sprints are the entry-level pedal in the Heusinkveld range but priced at €699.00 including VAT they’re in the region of twice the price of the Fanatec Clubsport Pedals V3 and 3 times the price of Fanatec’s Elite Pedals LC.

The Sprints have an industrial look and feel to them, with adjustable brake stiffness (by changing the rubber packers and spacers in the brake pedal), preload and pedal angle geometry. They’re quite easily installed if you have some basic assembly skills and, unlike their predecessors, the Pros, have the electronics built on to the brake pedal.

While most of us are very happy with around a 22kg brake pressure, you can calibrate these pedals up to a maximum of 64KG brake pedal force. That’s not far off LMP2 levels of brake force, configured via the SmartControl Software. Though you don’t really have to do any configuration at all (these pedals are plug and play) you can set dead zones, response linearity and save different profiles in SmartControl or use their pre-configured presets.