I've seen people ask, and I've wondered myself, whether one can drive faster with a steering wheel than a controller. Some have answered that yes, you can, but I've never seen solid evidence of it, and I just found out for myself, this is a little long, but might be of interest to those who are considering buying a wheel:
I've been playing GT5 as much as possible since the day it was released, amongst work, school, and the girlfriend, and I've been playing the GT series religously since GT3, so I've got a mountain's worth of experience using the controller.
In Practice mode, I like to log a personal best time with all of my favorite cars on certain tracks so that I can compare the cars apples to apples. I chose Monza for the track to compare all of my race cars. All times are on racing soft tires, no drivers aids, traction control zero, ABS 1. Best time is a best of 5 laps - no more, sure I could probably hammer out an even faster time given more laps, but doing it this way helps to see which cars I can put a fast lap down in sooner/easier to determine which cars I can be more consistent with.
Anyways, among the cars I've logged a time at Monza with was my Audi ABT Touring car (with all xtra HP mods) and the Peugot 908 (again with all xtra HP mods). The Audi is AWD, so really stable and composed and easy to put down a clean fast lap with. My best of 5 was a 1:43.6. The Peugot was another story. The car is just extremely light, has tons of power, and is RWD so even after tuning it requires a lot of finesse in 2nd and 3rd gear to maintain traction. I didn't get a nice fast time in until the 4th or 5th lap and that was a 1:32.6. I definitely felt there was a faster lap to be had there, but it was hard enough to just be smooth enough to get one good clean lap in within the 5.
Fast forward a week, I just got my Driving Force GT two days ago. Put a desk in front of the plasma tv, mounted the wheel to it, and used a desk chair to sit in. Not optimal, but it does the job for now. Even better ergonomics may make using the wheel even easier.
First of all, to anyone thinking of moving to a wheel, understand that you have to literally re-learn the game. The way you interact with the car is just totally different now that you have 900* of wheel rotation instead of 1" of joystick movement, coupled with force feedback which bucks when you hit the rumble strips and jerks when you come over a crest just slightly sideways. But, assuming you aren't a child and have been driving in real life, you'll acclimate, especially if you have any motorsports experience. I've been doing competetive autocrossing for the last three years and done a few track days myself so once I "unlearned" the techniques I had developed with a controller and started actually "driving" with the wheel, things began to click.
I started with license tests to get familiar with how the wheel felt, moved on to beginner and intermediate stuff on sports hard tires with basic cars and then on to tuned cars with racing hard tires. After a while I felt confident enough to use a race car. Spent about 3 hours racing an unmodified Honda NSX LM prototype against JGTC cars in the JGTC races in Extreme. Man, that is some fun and challenging stuff. So, here I am two days later and I'm just feeling confident enough with the wheel setup to use just about any car that I have, although I still haven't tried the Formula GT... might wait a bit more on that.
So, the cold hard facts: I just went back to Monza. First with the ABT car. Same settings as before, except the HP was a little down since I had used it a bunch and not changed the oil - the original 1:43.6 had been done with 610 horsepower, and now it was down to 585hp. Went out, first lap I got acclimated to the car, did a 1:44.x, on just the second lap around I smashed my best time with a 1:42.1, and every lap following was a hair faster, finally ending the fifth lap with a 1:41.5. More than two seconds faster.
At this point I was excited, so I decided to give the 908 a go. Mind you, this is the first time driving this fast of a car with the wheel. The ABT was the fastest car I'd driven up to this, so I was a bit apprehensive because I knew how touchy and fast the 908 was. My previous best was a 1:32.6. Went out on the first lap and kept it civil and did a 1:34.x, and on the second lap did a 1:30.5! Third lap was invalidated because I hit the grass in one spot, but it would have been a 1:29.2!
So, there you have it. The wheel offers so much more control and precision that, once you get used to it, you can really be faster AND more consistent (which is even more important than just being fast) with the wheel than a controller. I'm sure there are those who used the wheel and didn't like it, that's fine. Different strokes for different folks, but I won't be going back to the controller.
-Ryan
I've been playing GT5 as much as possible since the day it was released, amongst work, school, and the girlfriend, and I've been playing the GT series religously since GT3, so I've got a mountain's worth of experience using the controller.
In Practice mode, I like to log a personal best time with all of my favorite cars on certain tracks so that I can compare the cars apples to apples. I chose Monza for the track to compare all of my race cars. All times are on racing soft tires, no drivers aids, traction control zero, ABS 1. Best time is a best of 5 laps - no more, sure I could probably hammer out an even faster time given more laps, but doing it this way helps to see which cars I can put a fast lap down in sooner/easier to determine which cars I can be more consistent with.
Anyways, among the cars I've logged a time at Monza with was my Audi ABT Touring car (with all xtra HP mods) and the Peugot 908 (again with all xtra HP mods). The Audi is AWD, so really stable and composed and easy to put down a clean fast lap with. My best of 5 was a 1:43.6. The Peugot was another story. The car is just extremely light, has tons of power, and is RWD so even after tuning it requires a lot of finesse in 2nd and 3rd gear to maintain traction. I didn't get a nice fast time in until the 4th or 5th lap and that was a 1:32.6. I definitely felt there was a faster lap to be had there, but it was hard enough to just be smooth enough to get one good clean lap in within the 5.
Fast forward a week, I just got my Driving Force GT two days ago. Put a desk in front of the plasma tv, mounted the wheel to it, and used a desk chair to sit in. Not optimal, but it does the job for now. Even better ergonomics may make using the wheel even easier.
First of all, to anyone thinking of moving to a wheel, understand that you have to literally re-learn the game. The way you interact with the car is just totally different now that you have 900* of wheel rotation instead of 1" of joystick movement, coupled with force feedback which bucks when you hit the rumble strips and jerks when you come over a crest just slightly sideways. But, assuming you aren't a child and have been driving in real life, you'll acclimate, especially if you have any motorsports experience. I've been doing competetive autocrossing for the last three years and done a few track days myself so once I "unlearned" the techniques I had developed with a controller and started actually "driving" with the wheel, things began to click.
I started with license tests to get familiar with how the wheel felt, moved on to beginner and intermediate stuff on sports hard tires with basic cars and then on to tuned cars with racing hard tires. After a while I felt confident enough to use a race car. Spent about 3 hours racing an unmodified Honda NSX LM prototype against JGTC cars in the JGTC races in Extreme. Man, that is some fun and challenging stuff. So, here I am two days later and I'm just feeling confident enough with the wheel setup to use just about any car that I have, although I still haven't tried the Formula GT... might wait a bit more on that.
So, the cold hard facts: I just went back to Monza. First with the ABT car. Same settings as before, except the HP was a little down since I had used it a bunch and not changed the oil - the original 1:43.6 had been done with 610 horsepower, and now it was down to 585hp. Went out, first lap I got acclimated to the car, did a 1:44.x, on just the second lap around I smashed my best time with a 1:42.1, and every lap following was a hair faster, finally ending the fifth lap with a 1:41.5. More than two seconds faster.
At this point I was excited, so I decided to give the 908 a go. Mind you, this is the first time driving this fast of a car with the wheel. The ABT was the fastest car I'd driven up to this, so I was a bit apprehensive because I knew how touchy and fast the 908 was. My previous best was a 1:32.6. Went out on the first lap and kept it civil and did a 1:34.x, and on the second lap did a 1:30.5! Third lap was invalidated because I hit the grass in one spot, but it would have been a 1:29.2!
So, there you have it. The wheel offers so much more control and precision that, once you get used to it, you can really be faster AND more consistent (which is even more important than just being fast) with the wheel than a controller. I'm sure there are those who used the wheel and didn't like it, that's fine. Different strokes for different folks, but I won't be going back to the controller.
-Ryan
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I bought a rigid portable work bench for $30 instead of a $150 wheelstand. I can't freaking wait for this thing to get here. I'll start with the licences test first. That's a good idea as I already know how to beat them.
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(I've never raced with the DS3 BTW...) 
