I race. On track, and in the sim.
I started out in Radical racing about nine years ago and spent five years in a Radical SR3 RSX,
winning races at national and international level. Since then I've run the MX5 Cup with the BRSCC
and 750MC - the MX5 put me in the top five, with the occasional win, in what's arguably the most
competitive national club championship in the UK - and more recently I've been contesting the
Masters Historic Championship in a Lotus Elan 26R.
The simulator has been part of that the whole way. I hold a Class B iRacing licence with an
1800+ iRating, and while iRacing is where I spend most of my time, I rate rFactor 2 highly on
physics too. The hours behind the virtual wheel feed straight back into the real car - racecraft,
setup, procedures - which is exactly why I take the hardware this seriously. A wheelbase isn't a
gadget to me. It's the thing standing between my hands and the front axle.
Why direct drive gets its own site
The wheelbase is the one upgrade that changes everything else. It's where the force feedback is
generated, so it decides how much of the car you feel - the loading through a long
corner, the front tyre letting go, the kerb you can lean on versus the one that'll spit you off.
Get the base right and cheaper pedals and a modest rim still feel like a car. Get it wrong and
the best rim in the world is telling you nothing. That's a decision worth doing properly, and it
deserved more than a paragraph buried in a general sim-racing site - so I gave it one.
How I review, and what's on the rig
I'm a reviewer, so gear rotates through constantly. Right now the wheelbases I'm running are the
latest from Fanatec, Moza and Simucube - the Simucube 2-series, to be exact; I
run the 2, not the 3 - and the pedals are a mix of Heusinkveld, Simtrecs, Conspit,
Fanatec and Moza. Most of what I write about here I own and use. Occasionally a
manufacturer sends something over, sometimes for early feedback during development, which is
good fun - and when that's the case I'll say so. What I won't do is pretend I've lived
with something I haven't.
That honesty cuts both ways. I've not been won over by Asetek's kit the way a lot of the spec
sheets suggest I should be, so you'll find me saying that plainly rather than parroting the
launch copy. The whole point of the site is that the take is mine, backed by time on the rig -
not a consensus scraped from everyone else's reviews.
The affiliate bit, stated straight
Some links here are affiliate links - if you buy through one, I may earn a small commission at no
cost to you. It never changes the verdict. If a base is overpriced or a version is a
sideways-step, I'll say so, because the site is only worth anything if you can trust it more than
the shop that's selling you the thing.