The Best Sim Racing Pedals: 5 Top Picks

A full, pre-made Sim Racing rig can cost you anywhere between £250 for an entry level, bare-bones rig, to up to £3500 for something more advanced, built of the highest quality.

For Sim Racing beginners especially, buying a pre-built rig is the easier option…but veterans might find that they’re losing money, and more importantly, that they’re losing customisability in their rig. The importance of brakes cannot be underestimated, as it’s the braking zones where you’ll be able to shave seconds from your lap times. You need great pedals.

What Parts Does a Sim Racing Rig Need?

A Sim Racer rig is made up of three parts: the steering wheel, the seat, and racing pedals. The sim racing pedals especially are the most important point of contact between drivers and a car, and just like a real-life car, the pedals are one of the most complex parts of the whole system.

You guessed right, today we will be focusing on the pedals in this post.

Whether you’re looking to buy sim racing pedals or for a pedal upgrade to improve your brake performance and car control, we’ve chosen and reviewed 5 of the best Sim Racing pedals available in the UK sim world.

What are Sim Racing Pedals?

A Sim Racing pedal system will control three main things within the sim rig: the brakes, the clutch, and the throttle.

The difference between using a dedicated pedal system and just a regular game controller is like night and day; sim racer pedals give you an instant and accurate response from the car, and give you better control in the most demanding environments.

What are the differences between Sim Racer Pedals?

There are three types of sim racer pedals that you can buy; hydraulic pedals, potentiometer pedals, and load cell pedals. Each of these has their own benefits and drawbacks, of which we’ll go further into with each review.

The main differences between each type of pedal though, lie in their accuracy, the pedal feel and pedal design, and the affordability.

5 Best Sim Racing Pedals: Reviewed

Fanatec ClubSport V3

Heusinkveld Engineering Sim Racing Pedals Sprint – Team Redline Edition

Thrustmaster T-LCM Load Cell

SimCraft Pro Sim Pedals

Tilton 600 Pro

Fanatec ClubSport V3

Company History

The Fanatec ClubSport V3 are a popular all-rounder pedal set. If you’ve been into sim racers for a while then you might be familiar with Fanatec.

Founded in 1997, they have been developing external controllers and hardware for simulation games and have their speciality in developing rigs and accessories for simulation racing games.

Fanatec Clubsport V3 Pedals: Review

Fanatec’s Pedals are designed from the ground-up for performance and excellency. They’ve recently been updated for 2021, in particular their pedal plates have been redesigned for a better pedal feel. It’s time to introduce the Fanatec Clubsport V3 Pedals.

These are load cell pedals, and feature a custom made pressure-sensitive break pedal. Their pedal plates are curved in a ‘D’ shape, which facilitates better heel and toe technique on the brake pedal and when using the pedal set.

The pedals by default feature a 90kg load-bearing cell, but they also feature an adjustable pedal ratio, meaning the load can be altered to your liking.

A lower load cell weight will make the pedals more sensitive, and a higher one will give more tension and an overall better feel to the pedals.

The Fanatec Clubsport V3 have a high level of customisability both in how they can be adjusted to a rig, and also visually. You can find them in a variety of styles to match their steering wheels and other parts of your rig. They’re designed to match well with Fanatec’s wheelbases or existing rigs, and for the latter you’ll be able to swap these pedals in with no issue.

The ClubSport V3 Pedals will work on PC and on Consoles. If you play on a console however, you’ll need a Fanatec wheelbase or racing wheel to connect these pedals to your system – they won’t work with a direct USB connection to your XBOX/Playstation system.

Fanatec do a good job of detailing everything you need to know about their pedals on their website, including the nitty-gritty of compatibility so we suggest looking into that for more information. If you want to go a step further with these, you can add a brake performance kit, hydraulic pedal or hydralic damper to turn these into high end pedals.

Conclusion

Overall, Fanatec offer a great product at a reasonable price point. If you’re already part of their ecosystem then the ClubSport V3 Pedals are a no brainer to upgrade your sim racing rig with…but even if you’ve never bought any sim racing peripherals before, Fanatec are an excellent place to start.

Heusinkveld Engineering Sim Racing Pedals Sprint – Team Redline Edition

Company History

Heusinkveld Engineering have approach to sim racing accessories that’s based in real-life professional motorsports.

In designing their sim rigs they focus on making highest quality, realistic simulation racing experiences for professional drivers to be able to train for real races, but also on making hobbyist customers feel like pro drivers from the comfort of their own home.

Heusinkveld’s two most popular racing pedals are their Heusinkveld Sim Pedals Ultimate and Sim Pedals Sprint. The ones we’re reviewing here are the Heusinkveld Sim Pedals Sprint: Team Redline edition.

Heusinkveld Engineering Sim Racing Pedals Sprint – Team Redline Edition: Review

The Team Redline edition of the Heusinkveld Sprints are a special edition paintjob new for 2021, but for function they’re identical to the Heusinkveld Engineering Sprint Pedals.

The Heusinkveld Sprint Pedals sit at the higher end of the price spectrum, but the quality you get for the price increase isn’t anything to be looked over. These are load cell pedals (with a load cell brake) that have impressive hardware, but what really makes them shine is the software behind them.

Thanks to the custom electronics in the pedals, the Heusinkveld sim pedals take advantage of their SmartControl program which allows for unprecedented customisability in the pedals.

For example, you can increase or decrease the dead zone of the pedals and change the weight sensitivity of each individual clutch, throttle, and braking pedal. You can your changes into profiles, meaning that you can have multiple configurations that can be loaded and swapped between quickly.

The build of the pedals is also impressive. They’re made from laser-cut steel and have been through extensive prototyping and testing. Each pedal set has a durable design and is built to withstand 1 million cycles.

The Heusinkveld Sim Pedals Sprint are only compatible with PC, and can’t be used with consoles. However, they’re insanely simple to use; the pedal set is pre-calibrated and can be plugged into your system and used immediately, independently of an existing rig.

If you have one of Heusinkveld’s pedal base plate or rigs already though, the pedals are designed to be fully compatible with those.

Overall, the pedal set that Heusinkveld Engineering presents us with their Sprint Pedals is a premium quality package. You get impeccable standards of manufacturing and hardware compared to other pedals, but you also get a tailored experience thanks to their industry leading hardware.

If you’re a veteran of simulation racing and are looking to upgrade some basic parts of your rig, Heusinkveld’s Sprint Pedals will give you a noticeable increase in performance.

Thrustmaster T-LCM Load Cell Pedals

Company History

Thrustmaster develop accessories and hardware for a range of simulation games, from flight simulators to military simulations. Initially these were developed for professional and training uses, but eventually the brand expanded out to providing peripherals for video games and making these available commercially.

This is great for you as a buyer, because it means that Thrustmaster’s products are of professional-grade, and built for experts.

Thrustmaster T-LCM Load Cell Pedals: Review

The Thrustmaster T-LCM pedals are a load-cell pedal set, and immediately you might notice that they’re pretty affordable pedals, and some of the lowest priced you can find on the market.

This straight away makes them a great pick for beginners, because you get a real value for money with the quality on offer here.

The T-LCM pedals are a magnetic set, and this gives them some unique features, For one, they give a life-like race car feel using magnetic sensors. Because there are no potentiometers or contact points in the T-LCM pedals, there’s a lot less chance of them failing due to extended use and wear unlike standard pedals.

Thrustmaster’s T-LCM pedals also feature load cells and force sensors which can have a maximum pedal force of 100kg . The T-LCM have a highly adjustable design and almost every part of them can be customised through their excellent software.

It can allow each pedal to have an individual deadzone, and for the electronic force of each pedal to be adjusted accordingly.

The braking pedal can also be adjusted manually by switching the springs. Thrustmaster provide 6 of these, meaning it’s easy to find a calibration that suits you.

You can even customise the T-LCM’s down to the pedal spacing of each pedal. They also provide a fully adjustable pedal geometry by allowing users to change the height and inclination of each pedal.

Conclusion

All in all the Thrustmaster T-LCM Load Cell pedals are a ridiculous bargain, due to the sheer amount of customisability you get with them. They’re a solid choice for anyone who wants to have a lot of options with their peripherals, and wants an experience perfectly tailored to them.

SimCraft PRO Sim Pedals

Company History

Founded in 1988, Simcraft are manufacturers of parts and systems for professional race car companies. Their focus is on simulating the feel of a road car using purpose built technology.

Their most famous line of simulation racing hardware are the APEX simulator systems, which includes the APEX Pro and APEX Sport lines of sim racing accessories.

What makes SimCraft stand out is that they don’t just develop great pedals for video game and training sims; they take real pedals from race cars and convert those for use in games. This means you literally get the experience of racing pedals, with no compromises.

SimCraft PRO Sim Pedals: Review

The SimCraft PRO pedals are load cell racing pedals with a maximum brake pressure of 100kg, which is adjustable along with the pedal travel and resistance.

By manually adjusting the nut you can have a more firm or a more elastic feel to each pedal.

The technology of the clutch pedal especially is impressive. SimCraft use a combination of mechanical parts and gas-powered springs to achieve a singular experience with the clutch.

Once you try it and see how good it feels, you won’t want to go back to any other clutch.

The pedal system is made from premium forged aluminium right down to the pedal plate. Included you also get SimCraft’s custom pedal software, some alternate springs , and tools to set up the pedal set.

The system is compatible with most existing rigs, as it is connected through a USB controller. You’ll want to check the SimCraft website for specifics though.

Conclusion

As you can see, the SimCraft PRO Sim Pedals are the closest you can possibly get to a race car experience, and if that’s what you look for in racing sims then you’ll be very happy with what SimCraft offer…that is, if you’re willing to spend.

These pedals are by far the most expensive we have featured here but it’s easy to justify when you look at the expertise and craftmanship you’re getting for that price.

Tilton 600 Pro Pedals

Company History

Tilton primarily manufacture systems of road cars, and have done so since their founding in 1972. Since then they have been able to expand into a purpose built headquarters in California, where 90% of their products are manufactured in-house.

The systems they design have been used in F1 cars, and they were the pioneers of carbon clutch systems for racing cars.

Tilton 600 Pro Pedals: Review

Tilton’s 600 Pro pedals are used in F1 cars today, and are among the highest quality of motorsport engineering and innovation.

The pedals are forged aluminium, and allow for an adjustable pedal ratio for maximum customisability.

Something specific to the Tilton 600 Pro is that the larger size of the pedal system means that its sturdier and more rigid than other pedals.

They feature anti-slip foot pads, and when mounted they’re designed to have absolutely no wiggle or slipping while in use which is essential for brake technique.

The pedals come in 3 mounting varieties; floor-mount, overhung, and firewall. Each of these has the same specifications other than the configuration and position of the pedals, something that’s up to your preference for which is best.

The Tilton website features diagrams, instructions, and videos to guide you in installing the pedals. They also have a 3D CAD model of their products, which while intended for industry application could still help you to get a better picture of the pedals before you buy.

Something important to note though; with the Tilton pedals, you’re getting excellent hardware but no software. Since these are pedals designed for cars, in order to link them up to you’re simulation racing rig you’re going to need some prior expertise.

For this reason alone, there are better picks for beginners.

Conclusion

All of that being said, the Tilton 600 Series pedals are a very low price for what’s literally a Formula grade system. As long as you know how to install and use them to their fullest potential, they’re a great pick for enthusiasts.

Summary: The Best Sim Racing Pedals

Sim racing is one of those hobbies that’s a great mix of professional quality experiences and the passion and enthusiasm that brings racing fans together.

If you’re looking at building your own rig, upgrading one you have, or just buying pedals to dip your toes (no pun intended) into custom sim racing peripherals, we hope this has helped you decide which pedal system might be best for you and to find pedals that will improve your performance on the track.

We’ve tried to include a variety of options in this racing pedals guide, to match all budgets. If you’re reading this as a sim racing beginner, I would recommend you take a look at our beginners guide for more.