New steering wheel designed for Bentley’s Pikes Peak GT3 race car will be sold by gaming hardware maker Fanatec as an accessory for driving simulator rigs

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CREWE, ENGLAND- Driving simulator enthusiasts will soon have another accessory to fling money at. Luxury carmaker Bentley and specialist gaming accessory developer Fanatec have announced that the steering wheel designed for Bentley’s Pikes Peak GT3 race car will also be made available for driving game simulators soon. 

The big deal is that the Fanatec steering wheel won’t just be a fancy replica, like the Fanatec’s current range of Porsche, BMW and McLaren licensed high-end gaming wheels, but will be the exact same piece of hardware found in the real racing car. It essentially means that if the Bentley racing team need a replacement steering wheel for the race car, it can grab one off the shelf directly from Fanatec and it will fit right in. 

It’s the first of its kind in the gaming and automotive world. The accessory offers dedicated gamers a chance to closely experience what it feels like to drive one of the world’s most powerful racing cars.    

The center of the GT3 steering wheel carries a circular digital display that offers the driver telemetry and information about their performance. Design details include signature knurling on the rotary encoders, a forged carbon display bezel, two seven-way directional sticks with encoder functionality, a pair of aluminium thumb wheels with optical encoders, and four magnetic paddles – two for gear shifting and two auxiliaries, based on the design of Bentley’s Continental GT road car.     

When not being used, the collector’s piece steering wheel can be displayed on a wall or desk as it comes equipped with a special mount and hard travelling case. Actually, even if you don’t have a driving simulator rig and just fancy a piece of a real Bentley racing car at home, you can buy the wheel solely as a display item.

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It won’t be cheap when it eventually goes on sale. Fanatec’s wheel offerings typically start from above S$1,000, and that’s before you even include the wheel’s base unit and pedal kit to make them fully functional with driving simulator games and software. 

Thomas Jackermeier, CEO of Fanatec parent company Endor AG, was quoted as saying, “This is the most advanced wheel we’ve ever made, and it will be used in a car which is simply stunning and the definition of cool. We had the honour of making an iconic wheel for an iconic car to race at the legendary Pikes Peak International Hill Climb, and our customers can be part of it and drive the exact same wheel in a simulator.”    

The porting of a real racing car’s steering wheel over to a simulator rig is now made possible because even in real cars, the switches are electrical and software driven. Stronger force feedback motors mounted to driving simulator steering wheel bases also allow for heavier wheels to be fitted to gaming rigs, where in the past would have struggled and overloaded the electric motors of early simulator setups. 

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Meanwhile, the real Bentley Continental GT3 Pikes Peak car features a specially-tuned, twin-turbocharged, 4.0-litre V8 engine producing more than 750 horsepower and 1000 Nm of torque. Designed to run on renewable synthetic fuel, it will attempt a new record for the Pikes Peak hill climb course in Colorado in a production-based racing vehicle.

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