A written master piece by Oscar G. Garcia.
Although released in 1982, the movie Firefox must have reached my neighborhood video store a few years later. In it, the great Clint Eastwood had the dubious mission of stealing the most advanced Russian plane in the world and bringing it back to the United States of America. But there was a problem: in the Firefox plane, you didn’t have to press buttons, pull levers, or activate various relays; by thinking or imagining what you wanted the plane to do, the aircraft immediately understood and acted accordingly. I always remembered good old Clint struggling to think in Russian so that the futuristic gadget would understand him and not crash into the ground. Over the years, I also reflected on the premise that perfect technology, or the perfect interface, is the one that becomes transparent to the user.
Although the marketing of neural interfaces has been suggesting for decades that they are close to becoming a reality, and nowadays some technology is already controlled by gestures or shouting, it is curious that in racing vehicles—and generally, in any street vehicle with four wheels—we still rely, as we did a hundred years ago, on our feet and hands to translate our thoughts into action, whether it’s an instinctive act or something mechanized by training.
Sitting at the controls of a racing car and pushing it to its limits remains a bundle of latencies, corrections, and mechanical mishaps. Yet, there are people like Max Verstappen or Fernando Alonso, capable of beating you in any contraption, whether by turning a steering wheel, pulling a joystick, or clapping a tambourine while eating ice cream. Just as those who paint the Mona Lisa with their toes, their limbs and the artifacts they control are perfect extensions of their thoughts. They are, in terms of this article, transparent to the user.
And since it’s not the concept of morality or agency that makes us human but rather our ability to blame anything but ourselves, many of us end up in that natural fallacy of: I’m not going so fast because “my pedals suck“, “my wheel is too cheap“, or “my cockpit twists“. The bottleneck is never us; it’s the equipment. To make it clear, in the movie Firefox, Clint Eastwood was a damn good pilot, and frankly, it wouldn’t matter if that thing flew controlled only by his thoughts or with a Commodore 64 joystick. Someone good will always be good under any condition. But for those of us who aren’t as good… maybe, just maybe, with slightly better equipment, we could go faster. Or not.
And so begins, for real, the review of these Asetek pedals.
In that great engine that is thinking you’re worth much more than the technology around you, I proceeded to replace my esteemed—and great companions in misfortune—Fanatec V3 pedals with the La Prima model, the most basic kit from Danish company Asetek. It would be a change not only of materials but also of generation: the V3 was born almost ten years ago (2015) while Asetek belongs to that batch of brands that arrived in simracing when this sport’s peak began to stabilize after the pandemic (2022).
The Fanatec V3 are three forged iron pedals on a platform that weighs as much as it costs, along with its kit of various elastomers to find the exact pressure before the load cell (brake) or the position via a 12-bit Hall sensor (accelerator and clutch). A standard—used by a vast majority of enthusiasts—of exceptional quality for its price and designed by a company facing quite complex uncertainty in 2024.
Although changes should always be for the better, it’s worth keeping some doubts. Will I notice the difference? Will I benefit from it? Will they be more comfortable for my driving style?… The neophobia (fear of change) in the simracing world is not so much the anxiety of facing a new situation as the fear of breaking the small comfort zone we are used to. Because during a race, the only anchor point amid the storm of overtakes, braking, and lane changes is the cockpit in which we’ve spent hundreds or thousands of kilometers. We’ve come to know it so well that by its creaks, we know when half a turn of a screw has come loose. After hours sitting in it, it has become like the Firefox plane for Clint Eastwood, a completely transparent technology that we only remember when it causes problems. So, after several years with them, we sit and race without thinking. We assume they are there. No new calibrations, no moving a millimeter, no need to touch options. The cockpit and we are one. Like our underwear.
For that reason, the slightest change is bothersome. Phrases like “There is magic in new beginnings” we hear daily and usually from people who earn much more saying them than they ever make with their businesses. So no; change is tough and very stressful. And although it may not be magic, there are certainly expectations. Marketing is so strong that even Asetek embraces it without reservation: with my La Prima brake pedal, you can gain about 3 hundredths per lap. Just by buying my product. Who, in their right mind, could say no to such a heavenly gift?
The fine print of that somewhat tricky assertion says this will be the case “comparing La Prima with a position system instead of a pressure system.” For now, unless you come from a very entry-level range (G29 and the like), it is common for all pedals to already come with a load cell (pressure), including my shiny V3s. So be careful not to get carried away by grandiose advertising.
The problem with the shift towards something more “complex” or with more “features,” as they say now, is that it is not really a problem but a natural consequence. The more parameters, screws, and options you have, the more you can customize it, but at the same time, the more the user needs to truly understand what they want (which is not always possible). My first Spectrum controller consisted of a stick and a button, and I enjoyed it immensely. Now, I sit in the cockpit and have more menus and levers than a nuclear power plant console. Sometimes, though this may sound like an old man, it is much more enjoyable to turn on the TV and watch whatever is on rather than being forced to enter Netflix and spend half an hour deciding what to watch. In summary, the freedom of choice entails a great responsibility, and responsibility requires an effort, which ultimately, is time. Do we have the necessary time in adult life to try different springs, combine elastomers, move screws, angles, and pressures?
Asetek, like many other manufacturers, gives you all the options you need to adjust the pedals exactly to your liking. The inclination of each one separately, their total physical travel, the hardness (density) of the elastomer, the strength of the spring, calibrating the pressure applied, the dead zone… and then recalibrating afterwards in the software of your favorite simulator game. As you can see, although it is a wet dream, it can also be the perfect nightmare.
Since this article is not a typical review, nor a diary, it could serve to reflect the journey of change, or in other words, the sensations that have been produced over the days. To what extent can time improvements be credited? How long does it take to make these Asetek pedals as transparent as possible?
As expected, the first two days were very tough. Just like new jeans, the La Prima pedals felt very uncomfortable straight from the factory. The angle of my ankle with the La Prima compared to the V3 bothered me a lot. The brake felt like a real rock, like stepping on reinforced concrete. I had to move screws in the cockpit to adjust the overall angle. Then modify the angles of the pedals. Configure. Update. Test and reconfigure inside and outside of iRacing. And upon hitting the track, I kept locking up the brakes in tight corners and not reaching the minimum in faster ones. Summary: from very bad to worse.
The journey of optimistic expectations that begins with any hardware change collided with reality. This was not going to be easy. More angles, more tests, more screws. Was it me? Was it the cockpit? Were the pedals? 12 bits of throttle (V3) against 16 bits (La Prima) should be providing more intermediate steps, and that – in theory – is always better. The brake, Asetek’s crown jewel, should be delivering more sensitivity. For now, neither was happening. And so the days passed with the same feeling that time was passing much faster than my car was running on the track.
However, just like what happened to Clint Eastwood with the Russian plane and happens daily with the rest of humanity, when technology shows its teleology, the user has no choice but to adapt to it and little by little, adapt to the new. Because until something changes, technology will rule the relationship.
And there, with patience, adjusting settings, turning the wheel that gives more or less air to the elastomer, the times started to come. When my left foot stopped missing the travel and force of the V3 and understood that the wall (as Asetek calls the feeling of pressing La Prima) had a direct relationship with what the car did during braking, optimism returned. After another couple of days, I also started to better understand the sensation between my feet and the mechanics now under them, and thanks to the software’s dead zones, I could better limit the maximum and minimum action zones.
This leads to a more complex question. If we understand the dynamic range of a technology as the complete range between the minimum and maximum value, using the dead zones for more than just avoiding false values when resting your foot would reduce the overall response and therefore, wouldn’t we be limiting the quality (total number of values) of the pedals?
After two full weeks of driving on the usual circuits, I can say – without a doubt – that the switch from the V3 to La Prima has been an improvement in the experience. Yes, like confirmation bias, that annoying feeling that forces us to positively value the new over the old, it will always be floating around, to validate it, there is no other way than to think like the enlightened, being methodical, critical, and disciplined with the tests. It was time to see if the sensations matched reality.
There is a circuit that for some reason I like more than others and it was perfect for testing La Prima against the V3: Suzuka. Its esses would allow me to see how the throttle was doing and the last corner how it handled a strong and sustained brake. Plus, it was the last circuit I drove with the Formula Light and the V3, so it was very fresh in my mind.
As I mentioned above, the change of pedals is complex on a cerebral level. You need to give it time – and drive lap after lap – for the brain to rebuild the entire asphalt circuit into a new neural circuit. Eventually, with perseverance, a week and a half after the change, the result I was waiting for came: purple numbers. I was improving my fastest times of the season with the Light, and although only in very specific sectors that then didn’t complete with the overall lap time, it was already promising and a desire to continue.
Excluding that the racing line wasn’t optimal, the sensation of La Prima (red color) provided greater control compared to my best lap with the V3 (blue color), gradually leading to increased confidence over time. The feeling that I could brake harder without locking up and then could get on the throttle earlier due to managing inertia helped to stabilize lap times lap by lap. It was slightly faster, yet also more consistent.
At two weeks since my first track outing with La Prima, I think I’m starting to approach what Clint Eastwood felt in his Firefox. I turn on the simulator, sit down, and hit the track without thinking about the hardware. Yesterday, I finally lowered my best time at Suzuka by 20 hundredths over several consecutive laps, a time that coincidentally resembles what Asetek promises on its website. Of course, I don’t believe in magic, let alone in the power of marketing suggestion (or coercion), but the novel sensation of braking, squeezing the hard wall and letting my leg muscles remember how much force to apply, is embedding itself in my driving in a more nuanced way than with the V3, where I could still feel a combined travel with pressure.
Regarding this “wall,” I must say that although I’m starting to get the feeling, I still have certain doubts about its travel. In addition to those mentioned above, I wonder if in a real single-seater (I have never had the audacity—or the money—to sit in one), the sensation of braking corresponds to that “initial travel until the pads touch the disc” followed by “the wall” when the mechanism firmly embraces the disc. In my case, I’ve set the La Prima brake with almost no initial travel, and the current perception is that I’m braking from the first instant. You’ll have to tell me if I’m wrong. For now, it works for me to go faster, which I suppose is what this is all about.
SUMMARY
The change is tough. It takes time. It frustrates. It makes you drive slow for a few weeks and almost lose hope. You have to forget what you’ve learned over the years and gradually understand the effects of new technology on your feet. Then, you start to make it yours (or rather, the technology starts to claim you as its own), and from there, everything improves.
My lap times are dropping more than with the V3, and I would like to attribute this to La Prima, which is the only technological change. Otherwise, Asetek has built a pair of pedals worthy of their price tag (see full review right here), and their features, style, and build quality guarantee them a sure success. I miss the feedback motors under the brake and accelerator pedals of the V3, but since I have an SFX100, it vibrates even my wisdom tooth when I hit a curb.
We’ll see which scenario stays in simracing if the rumors of a crisis at Fanatec come true because the V3, priced similarly to La Prima (though without a clutch), have been on the market for too long, and the materials (aluminum vs. iron) and some components (12 bits vs. 16 bits) have improved a lot in the last decade. What will be the benchmark mid-range pedals in this new decade?
It is noteworthy and worthy of applause the upgrades that Asetek allows for its pedals. Being able to move from the most basic like La Prima to the “Forte” accelerator and from there to the “Invicta” brake should be the model to follow by other manufacturers, as nothing but previous design prevents it. This way, the expenditure is gradual, and we don’t end up throwing materials everywhere.
The next article/reflection will be in a few weeks, when we switch from the Prima brake to the Invicta and its hybrid hydraulic technology, stepping up to the Forte accelerator. If my lap times keep dropping, I’ll end up believing I’m fast. And that’s when I’ll really mess up 🙂
See you in the next one.
Thank you very much to Asetek for the test unit. We wish them all the luck in the world in this complex but fun world of simulation hardware. And as much as the fear of change paralyzes us, we are living the golden age of simracing. Let’s have fun on the track.
Asetek’s La Prima Pedals can be purchased from the reseller Simufy for 399 euros or in the Asetek official website (5% OFF using this coupon: SIMRACER.ES)
- Simufy (2% OFF using our code: SFYOPTF7ZMR98)
- Asetek (5% OFF using our code: SIMRACER.ES)
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