Controller → Wheel: First Day Reality Check And help needed

[Lightpilgrim]

Hi everyone,

The moment has finally come for me to move from a controller to a wheel, and I wanted to share my first real experience with this transition — and ask for advice from those who have already been through it.

My current setup:
• Fanatec ClubSport DD+ (Gran Turismo DD Extreme base)
• Fanatec ClubSport Steering Wheel Formula V2.5
• SimNet SP2 Pro pedals

Today was my first proper day on the rig. The first laps were honestly chaos — I drove like a monkey, everything felt unnatural, and I had to spend time calibrating and adjusting just to get a usable baseline.

Once things felt somewhat right, I jumped into Circuit Experience at Dragon Trail to practice fundamentals. After maybe five laps I got gold, and after more practice I ended up around 2.2 seconds faster than the gold target. Out of curiosity, I switched back to controller and after about 10 laps I matched almost the exact same lap time. So on Dragon Trail, wheel vs controller feels basically equal — maybe a tenth either way.

Then came the reality check.

I went into the current Spa time trial with the Porsche 911 GT3. My controller lap is around 2:18.7 (only one real session so far), roughly under 2% off top times — so reasonably representative of my current pace.

On the wheel, however, I am about four seconds slower. I struggle to put a lap together, and the car feels much harder to rotate and place precisely.

What stands out most is turning and rotation. Example: Turn 1 at Spa — heavy braking, strong rotation to the right, then quick throttle. On controller I can rotate the car naturally and efficiently; on the wheel I feel like I need much more movement and effort to achieve the same rotation.

My main question is specifically about settings and setup:
• Are there wheel or in-game settings that can make rotation easier and more responsive, closer to how quickly a controller reacts?
• Which settings should I focus on first (FFB strength, steering angle / SEN, sensitivity, NDP/NFR, in-game force feedback, etc.) if the car feels heavy to rotate?
• How do you tune the wheel so it’s easier to place the car precisely on corner entry and mid-corner?

Braking feels mostly fine, and acceleration is improving, but it’s clearly connected to how well I can rotate and position the car. If I can improve rotation, I know the rest will follow.

I’d really appreciate any practical setup advice from people who’ve already dialed this in.

Thanks in advance — really looking forward to learning from this community.

 

[Skinny McLean]

Bear in mind that when using a controller the game applies hidden assists; when using a wheel you’re more on your own. Instead of expecting to beat records right away give yourself some time to get used to your new equipment.

 

[The Crock]

You made an enormous leap in equipment, like a seriously monumental leap lol. For comparison, my equipment leaps were more incremental: Controller>Logi G29>Fanatec DD Pro>used Podium F1>DD Extreme for the Fullforce. An adjustment period is expected here. Going from a controller to the DD+ is wild and I commend you for the buy once/cry once attitude.

The good news is your equipment is end game already. Like already mentioned, the controller provides a lot of assistance to smooth inputs, which is now gone with a wheel. You clearly have the inherent pace.

The most significant difference is the load cell in your Simnet pedals. You'll regain all your pace when you get used to that. There's no secret wheelbase setting to make you faster. That's all on you now to get the car rotated properly and the details from a direct drive give you way more info now.

I do advise keeping Damper low, to feel the car. The weight in the wheel can be brought down further by reducing the overall FFB on the base, but I don't recommend. If you're struggling with the weight of the wheel, GT7 has an auto setup in the wheel which caps the NM to 9. I'd say use that to get used to the weight. When you do, you'll be begging for a heavier wheel, it happens to all of us.

Here's my wheelbase settings and a brief explanation:

FFB - 100 - overall strength of the wheelbase, leave at 100 and adjust in game torque downwards to have the full dynamic range of your base available to you at all times.
Sen - Auto - GT7 auto-detects the rotation angle of each car on per-car basis, leave this alone.You want a 1:1 movement between your real life actions on the wheel vs. in-game hand movements.
NDP - 12 - Natural damper, adds weight, too much and you lose detail. Too little and you get too much mechanical noise from the high frequency road effects.
NFR - 5 - Natural friction - Add simulated friction of the front tires - too much, lose details
NIN - 3 - Natural inertia - adds a simulated counter weight, too much, you guessed it, lose detail
INT - 2 - Interpolation filter - basically a smoothness filter - 1 is too rough in GT7 and 3 a tad too mushy. Raising this too high can introduce lag as well.
FEI - 100 - Force effect intensity - volume dial for the level of FFB detail. Lowering this past 70 can introduce a lot of lag in the feedback. Leave this at the highest setting to get all the information the game is trying to send you.
Fullforce - 35 - too much here and the effects get in the way of more useful FFB. You can still feel road details and curbs with this turned off. This is definitely a less is more setting despite how much people rave about it and the Logitech equivalent, TrueForce.

FOR, SPR, DPR - leave at 100, GT7 only uses the FOR settings to generate the FFB signal. Lowering this lowers the max torque your base can output, thus reducing the dynamic range.

In game torque - road cars 2-3, higher downforce cars - 4-5
Sensitivity is always 1 on direct drives, don't ever go higher, oscillations can be introduced.
Depending on the car, at around setting 7 for max torque you introduce clipping on this base.

 

[Lightpilgrim]

Thanks guys — very, very helpful. I think I understand quite a lot already, but I want to clarify a few things.

For context, most of what I know about transitioning from pad to wheel comes from listening to other people rather than personal experience, so this is all very new to me. It’s now been about 24 hours since I switched — basically one full day of driving spread across yesterday and today.

I’ve done three tracks so far.

First, I ran Dragon Trail Circuit Experience. I beat my old lap time by around 2.0–2.2 seconds on the wheel. However, when I picked up the controller again, I could match that pace, so on this track I’d say I’m currently more or less equal between pad and wheel (possibly still slightly faster on pad).

Then I moved to Kyoto Driving Park Circuit Experience with a Gr.3 car. I struggled massively at first just to reach gold. Eventually I became consistent enough to hit the target, and I’m now faster than a lap I did about six months ago — but still roughly one second slower than my best from around three months ago. So at the moment I’m about one second slower on wheel than on pad there.

Then I tried the Spa 911 GT3 time trial. Here I’m around 2.5–3 seconds slower, although I haven’t practiced enough yet and may revisit it tonight or tomorrow.

So to summarize where I am and what I’m noticing as a pattern:

At first I felt like the car simply wouldn’t rotate — like the wheel wasn’t doing anything. Now I’m starting to understand how rotation works. It feels much more physical than on pad, but I’m beginning to get it. After about 300 km of driving I’m definitely feeling fatigue, but I’m able to drive consistently.

Braking is slowly improving, and I’m beginning to understand how to rotate the car better, which feels very positive.

The biggest time loss is clearly on corner exit. Specifically:

• Corners like Turn 1 at Spa — heavy braking from high speed into a tight corner, then accelerating out — where I can lose close to a second in just that one turn.
• The final two corners at Kyoto Driving Park — similar situation, probably another 0.5–0.7 seconds lost

In general, what I struggle with most is the transition from high-speed approach → heavy braking → rotation → early acceleration. I’m very hesitant on throttle application at exit and still not comfortable with it, and this is where I’m losing most of my time.
If I can get close to my pad pace within the next two weeks, I’ll be extremely pleased. If I’m roughly equal pace in 2–4 weeks, I’ll be very happy.

Regarding settings, I now have a baseline setup that I’ll keep adjusting. Acceleration and throttle feel mostly fine. Braking still needs practice, and I also need more time to understand force feedback and how to use it properly. Thanks again for all the settings suggestions — I’ll create profiles and keep experimenting.

One final question: if anyone here is using SimNet pedals, I’d really like to ask a few more specific questions.

And overall — I’m very curious: what helped you most with learning corner exits on a wheel? Did you go through the same phase I’m going through now? Is this experience similar to yours?

 

[peniu]

In general, what I struggle with most is the transition from high-speed approach → heavy braking → rotation → early acceleration. I’m very hesitant on throttle application at exit and still not comfortable with it, and this is where I’m losing most of my time.
If I can get close to my pad pace within the next two weeks, I’ll be extremely pleased. If I’m roughly equal pace in 2–4 weeks, I’ll be very happy.

Regarding settings, I now have a baseline setup that I’ll keep adjusting. Acceleration and throttle feel mostly fine. Braking still needs practice, and I also need more time to understand force feedback and how to use it properly. Thanks again for all the settings suggestions — I’ll create profiles and keep experimenting.

One final question: if anyone here is using SimNet pedals, I’d really like to ask a few more specific questions.

And overall — I’m very curious: what helped you most with learning corner exits on a wheel? Did you go through the same phase I’m going through now? Is this experience similar to yours?

This is pretty much what I experienced - being hesitant on the throttle at corner exits. I think it's due to confidence - I had plenty of it to catch any oversteer with a controller, just a quick move of a finger and it's dealt with. It is much more effort to catch any slide on a wheel and it's more risky.

I pretty much only play online TTs now on both devices, my mileage with controller is higher, but my pace now is comparable on both. There are some combos which one or the other takes over. Oversteery cars I'd likely be faster in on controller due to above, while high speed precise corners would be easier on a wheel. As an example corner with big banking on Lago Maggiore - it's terrbily difficult to get perfect line on controller for me.

I also have Simnet pedals, there's at least a few of us in the forum here, so feel free to ask anything. What at least caught me out with them and only discovered it recently is that my settings were wrong on them - had to add some spacers to brake stack as the rod on brake doesn't have enough thread with my configuration and there was zero resistance for the first couple mm. See around 2:30 in below video to see what I mean - nut would stop at the end of thread instead of pushing on the stack.


I would not get too hung up on finding the perfect settings for the wheel - grab settings from the forum and practice - it's good to limit the variables in my opinion and build muscle memory first, only then play with the settings.

 

[Greycap]

And overall — I’m very curious: what helped you most with learning corner exits on a wheel? Did you go through the same phase I’m going through now? Is this experience similar to yours?

Nothing but a ton of practice. Back when I made the transition it took about two months to be consistently back at the same level as before. This was with GT4 and a Driving Force Pro, but I doubt it would be all that different nowadays. It sounds very familiar knowing what you should be doing but not being able to do it and losing the rear end half of the time if not more. Figuring out how to catch oversteer was by far the hardest thing for me.

But, don't get discouraged by having a hard time in the beginning while reading stories from people who switched to a wheel and immediately beat all their old times by several seconds. That simply doesn't happen, there are two possibilities - either they're lying like troopers or were so terribly hopeless with the pad that anything is an improvement. If you were already a gold level driver with the pad, like you were now and I was back in the day, there's zero chance that you can go from finger movements measured in millimetres to using both hands and feet with the same skill without a serious learning phase as they're two entirely different things. Building the muscle memory takes time.

On the subject of lap times with both options, I've been purely a wheel player since 2006 and my pad driving is every bit as rusty as you can guess from that but every now and then, perhaps once a year if even that, I try it for a few laps to see how big the difference really is. On a two minute lap it's somewhere near half a second in my case and I'm still using the right stick for throttle and brake as I never had to learn the triggers for pedals so left foot braking is out of the question. I'd say the lap time is pretty much 99% knowing what to do - the braking points, where to turn in etc. and the last 1% is executing it with the hardware you have. That 1% is one second on a 1'40 lap which just about checks out.

 

[The Crock]

Traction control was the last assist I took off precisely because of how tricky it is with a pedal in GT7. It does take a while cus too much and you're done in this game. It's definitely a struggle to tell which corner you can give it full beans and which ones you gotta be really careful on throttle application.

 

[RCKakashi14]

Thanks guys — very, very helpful. I think I understand quite a lot already, but I want to clarify a few things.

For context, most of what I know about transitioning from pad to wheel comes from listening to other people rather than personal experience, so this is all very new to me. It’s now been about 24 hours since I switched — basically one full day of driving spread across yesterday and today.

I’ve done three tracks so far.

First, I ran Dragon Trail Circuit Experience. I beat my old lap time by around 2.0–2.2 seconds on the wheel. However, when I picked up the controller again, I could match that pace, so on this track I’d say I’m currently more or less equal between pad and wheel (possibly still slightly faster on pad).

Then I moved to Kyoto Driving Park Circuit Experience with a Gr.3 car. I struggled massively at first just to reach gold. Eventually I became consistent enough to hit the target, and I’m now faster than a lap I did about six months ago — but still roughly one second slower than my best from around three months ago. So at the moment I’m about one second slower on wheel than on pad there.

Then I tried the Spa 911 GT3 time trial. Here I’m around 2.5–3 seconds slower, although I haven’t practiced enough yet and may revisit it tonight or tomorrow.

So to summarize where I am and what I’m noticing as a pattern:

At first I felt like the car simply wouldn’t rotate — like the wheel wasn’t doing anything. Now I’m starting to understand how rotation works. It feels much more physical than on pad, but I’m beginning to get it. After about 300 km of driving I’m definitely feeling fatigue, but I’m able to drive consistently.

Braking is slowly improving, and I’m beginning to understand how to rotate the car better, which feels very positive.

The biggest time loss is clearly on corner exit. Specifically:

• Corners like Turn 1 at Spa — heavy braking from high speed into a tight corner, then accelerating out — where I can lose close to a second in just that one turn.
• The final two corners at Kyoto Driving Park — similar situation, probably another 0.5–0.7 seconds lost

In general, what I struggle with most is the transition from high-speed approach → heavy braking → rotation → early acceleration. I’m very hesitant on throttle application at exit and still not comfortable with it, and this is where I’m losing most of my time.
If I can get close to my pad pace within the next two weeks, I’ll be extremely pleased. If I’m roughly equal pace in 2–4 weeks, I’ll be very happy.

Regarding settings, I now have a baseline setup that I’ll keep adjusting. Acceleration and throttle feel mostly fine. Braking still needs practice, and I also need more time to understand force feedback and how to use it properly. Thanks again for all the settings suggestions — I’ll create profiles and keep experimenting.

One final question: if anyone here is using SimNet pedals, I’d really like to ask a few more specific questions.

And overall — I’m very curious: what helped you most with learning corner exits on a wheel? Did you go through the same phase I’m going through now? Is this experience similar to yours?

Welcome to the wheel life!

Though I use an entirely different wheel, a T598, it takes me a lot of time to adjust. And despite my hectic schedule, I always find time during the day to practice, either hours or at least half an hour. Having a wheel takes total commitment. When I got a G29, at first I felt and I saw that my lap times were much slower than with a controller. But with thorough practice, I was able to lap 3 seconds faster.

A year later, I switched to a T598. Again, it's adjustment phase all over and now that I got a 488 GT3 Wheel add on, I got three seconds faster than with a G29. Same routine - hours and hours of practice, trying to find the best racing line and learning how different drivetrains work on the track.

For corner exits, TC is still off and... practice with accelerator control. Fun fact, Keisuke Takahashi from Initial D, his method is very very effective.


From here on out, you have to invest more time on practice with a wheel, especially that yours is a higher end than mine.