- 235
- Lake District
My real-world experience, whilst not exactly all-encompassing or anything to write home about, suggests that the torque you feel at the steering wheel is specifically about g-force and tyre-grip, and not so much about vehicle size and power. It is also hugely dependant upon the type of tyres in use, the type of track surface, exactly what was running on the track immediately preceding your race or session, the temperate of the tyres, the ambient temperature, the track temperature, and also just as important to all of that: whether or not you have found the optimum pressure for your particular tyres in their particular state, in the particular temperature range, for your particular driving style i.e. ‘smooth entry' or ‘chuck it in’.
That last sentence explains why pre-race practice (with as many variables as close as possible to race conditions) is so vitally important to giving you the best machine to race with. You don’t just need a perfect engine and driver, you need the optimal tyre pressures to get maximum grip from your tyres, but also in a way that the tyres will last for the duration of your race or stint (if you will be changing tyres). Can you see where this is going yet, in the context of sim racing?
Spoiler: in answer to the question "How much torque does a Gt3/4 car produce in the steering wheel?”, not only is the level of torque going to vary considerably by car, track, tyre, temperature etc. etc. etc, but that level of torque is going to feel different to different people.
Let’s look at this in a different way. We’ve all been karting, yes? Let’s take a known track with a known surface on a hot summer's day. In the morning, some heavy corporate hire-karts go out on track wearing corporate boots (designed to last for dozens or even hundreds of sessions), driven by a bunch of mates who don’t often go karting. After fifteen minutes of whizzing round the track, the tyres are warm, the chaps are having a ball, but their arms are starting to feel very tired with what they perceive to be hellishly grippy tyres. How much torque are they feeling at the wheel? …not a lot by karting standards but it doesn’t matter; their arms are aching; they won’t be able to ‘feel’ much soon because their arms will start to weaken …if their necks don’t give out first!
Over the lunchtime, the afternoon Owner/Driver sprint racers rock up with their race karts, keen to test their karts before a race that coming weekend. They’re running TKM Extreme karts with sticky sprint tyres and it’s a hot day. Out they go, laying down lap after lap, diving into the pits, adjusting their pressures, then flying back out again. They are trying hard to find the optimum pressures for their particular driving style, in this particular kart, on this particular track, with this particular tyre, in this particular ambient temperature. And when they think they have it, they’ll note everything down so that if the weather changes at the weekend, they’ll have the best chance of making allowances accordingly. This is the fun (or not) of real-world racing as compared to sim-racing.
After an hour of testing, most of the sprint racers are tired and their arms are aching. They are not used to driving at race-pace for more than ten minutes at a time, so their driving precision is suffering because their arms are aching. Does it matter to them how much torque they are getting at the wheel? …not in the slightest - they are hot, tired, and they pray to God that they have found the optimum tyre pressures, and that the loss of grip wasn’t down to caster angle or seat (chassis) rigidity or something else that interfered with their testing without them realising!
After lunch the Owner/Driver enduro racers turn up for their two-hour race. They are driving Rotax Max karts with an engine punch that throws you back in the seat so hard that you have to brace yourself even though you’re in a bucket seat. Their karts are wearing enduro boots but these are almost as sticky as sprint tyres. These guys are used to racing at a sprint-like pace for hours at a time, so they go to the gym or workout most days. They race or practice two or three times a week, and their necks and arms are honed to athletic levels of fitness.
They ready their karts and go out for qualifying, taking just two laps to reach race-pace. They have perfectly balanced karts, soft tyres, warm temperatures and, crucially, the track is already rubbered-in because the sprint guys where out just before them. And after two hours of sprint-like racing in the hot weather, they finish their race looking just as fresh as when they started. But what was the level of torque that they felt at the wheel? Does it matter? Was it relative to their ability to drive well in the particular circumstances of that race on that day? No, because everything was relative to what they expected. And this all goes for any type of racing vehicle, road cars, race cars, karts, whatever.
So now the corporate hire-karters get back out for another ten-minute session, and are blown away by how different their karts feel. It’s like night and day! Why? …simply because the track has had sprint and enduro race karts laying down rubber all afternoon. And how much difference does this make to the torque they feel at the wheel? …somewhere between ‘lots’ and ‘lots more’, even though every other factor is the same as it was that morning.
To give some context to this scenario, by the way, when it comes to grip, g-forces and torque-at-the-steering wheel, there is very little in the way of vehicle types (GT3/4 or whatever), that will be greater that that felt in a proper race-kart on sticky tires on a rubbered-in track. This was told to me by quite a few mates who have raced all the way up to ’slicks and wings’ cars including F1. And this is one reason why you’ll often find F1 drivers racing karts (not corporate karts) in their spare time, because whilst not in any way like the speed of F1 racing, the thrills and g-forces are still there to a degree …so I’m told.
So then a corporate karter manages to persuade an enduro O/D karter to let him have a go in his Rotax Max - they must be really good mates! The corporate karter does a few laps at a crawl by comparison, but by lap five his arms feel like they are dropping off. His neck starts to give out and two laps later he can no longer turn the wheel. How much torque does he feel at the wheel? The answer is: ‘too much’ …for him.
So this long tome of a post is all about explaining how the level of torque felt at the wheel of any vehicle will depend upon so many variables that an exact measure/metric would be meaningless. But more importantly, the amount of torque felt at the wheel is only useful if you can feel the difference in grip as you drive round the circuit, which you won’t if your arms get too tired because the torque is too much to cope with. So, like Einstein’s famous theory: it’s all relative.
If you can feel the difference between a gripping tyre on entry to a bend, and a tyre that is just starting to break away mid-corner, then you have the perfect amount of torque which which to race effectively. To a corporate karter that torque amount might be ‘x’, and to an O/D enduro racer that torque might be ‘10x’, but as long as they are each getting useful feedback about what their tyres are doing during cornering, then both ‘x’ and ‘10x’ are enough.
With regards to the settings of ‘max torque’ and ‘sensitivity’ for the GT DD wheel (which I have in 8 Nm guise), I am a great believer in trusting the people that make these things. When I first got my wheel, I visited https://forum.fanatec.com/discussion/25219/gran-turismo-7-ps4-ps5-fanatec-recommended-settings which states:
This was my starting point, regardless of the endless list of people who think they know more than the Fanatec engineers, or like to think that every update changes the landscape beyond all recognition. I’m not nearly as clever as many of those who post their settings, so I stick with what I consider to be an authoritative source, and see how I get on.
So I have always used a ‘max torque’ of 5 and a ‘sensitivity’ of 1, and for me, that gives a feel that I can totally relate to from my real-world racing days. I can count on one hand the number of times I have momentarily lost feedback (can’t remember what the term is …clipping, I think), and that has always been on the first infield hairpin at Daytona, when driving a Gr.1 vehicle. But that only lasts for a few seconds or so.
I genuinely don’t understand these settings like BWX and PirovacBoy do (hats off to them both), but I know what I feel and I know what I need to feel to race at my best, and where I have everything is where I like to be.
I’m no expert; I haven’t real-world raced for about ten years, but these are my thoughts on the question asked. Feel free to disagree - I’ve got a thick skin!
...well, you did ask!
I have no clue as to why? Part of me thinks this thing is breaking in? I am using it A LOT as it otherwise works perfectly fine and have yet to have not one disconnect in GT7, ACC or F1-2023.
D+
