This past weekend I was lucky enough as a lover of all things racing to check out the inaugural U.S. edition of the Sim Racing Expo in Charlotte, North Carolina. Among the raft of incredible hardware, something unique caught my eye.
Fanatec, nowadays owned by Corsair, has been a huge player in the sim racing space for many years. But the company also has a unique crossover product that's not just built for your many hours in iRacing. You can use it on a real-life racing car, too.
The Fanatec Podium BMW M4 GT3 racing wheel is not a replica. It was developed with BMW and is the actual wheel used on the 2022 spec BMW M4 GT3 race car. Only you can pop it out of the vehicle and use it for virtual racing, too. It's absolutely wild.
I'm obviously aware that almost nobody who reads this will be in the market for this wheel. Not unless they have a ton of cash to burn on the most realistic setup they can get, or they're lucky enough to have access to a BMW M4 GT3 car. But if you do want one, you can grab your own for $1,599.99 from Fanatec's store.
But its interest to me is not just that it's a cool product or a high-end racing wheel. It's a unique example in its own right, but also indicative of the larger lesson I've learned at this same event.
I love racing games, both the more casual ones, like Forza Horizon 6, and the more serious sim approaches you can find in titles such as iRacing, RaceRoom, Assetto Corsa, and the like. I've grown up loving racing, and the virtual kind has overall been my favorite category for many, many years.
But sim racing no longer just has to be a bit of fun. I've toured the Williams F1 factory here in the UK, as an example, and seen their absurdly expensive professional setup. Hardware and software not accessible to the common man.
But the crossover between the virtual and the real world has never been closer, and the Fanatec Podium wheel is a striking example of this. Real drivers can have accurate sim experiences in their own homes these days. And in this case, using the same hardware they're driving out on the track.
If you have the budget, you can build something close enough to a professional race simulator now in the comfort of your own home. But even if you don't have tens (or hundreds) of thousands of dollars to play with, realism has never been closer.
The Fanatec Podium BMW M4 GT3 is still a unique example of this. But other companies do offer striking replicas of real-life racing wheels you can use at home with your gaming PC.
But what's it actually like as a wheel? It's probably the finest piece of hardware of its kind I've ever touched. In pursuit of finding the best racing wheels alongside my colleagues, we have to take a number of factors into account, not least price.
But this is a product unlike any other I've touched. That's because it isn't a replica; it isn't designed by a company to look like a racing wheel. It is a racing wheel. It has to stand up to the environment on a real race track, have all the features a driver needs, and not fall apart under pressure.
I've never held anything like it in my life. It's made from carbon fiber, it has magnetic gear shift paddles, adjustable analog clutch paddles, and there's even a D-pad hidden beneath the BMW logo.
It's fully compatible with PC on a wide range of Fanatec wheel bases; it simply snaps on and off with the included QR2 Pro quick release. It isn't, sadly, compatible with Xbox, but it does have some support for PS4 and PS5.
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It's an unreal thing to hold, and the idea behind it is even more impressive. As I say, most of us would never need this, but any of us can buy it, even if we don't have a GT car parked in the garage.
The days of passing off even the best racing games and sim racing experiences as subpar are long gone. Racers are invested in the virtual now almost as much as the real, and for those of us who simply can't afford to get into real racing, what we can have at home is now more realistic than ever. And it won't slow down.
Getting into sim racing and getting good at it is also a legitimate way to get noticed and see opportunities in the real world. An ex-Call of Duty champion, Ian Porter, is now a racing driver. William Byron, a two-time Daytona 500 winner, cut his teeth on iRacing.
So while most of us may never own a product like the Fanatec Podium BMW M4 GT3 racing wheel, we can all appreciate that it exists at all. More of this, please.
The Sim Racing Expo will be returning to Charlotte, NC, in 2027, so if you're a virtual racing fan based in the States, I highly recommend checking it out.
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