Why should you calibrate your sim racing pedals?

It’s all about comfort, maintenance and performance! You’ve just bought your CSL Elite Pedals V2 or your ClubSport Pedals V3 from Fanatec. Well done! Now you want to plug them into your Fanatec Wheel Base or the pc and get started. Well, yes, that’s definitely what you can do, because the pedals work a 100% out of the box.

However, there are a few things you should know to make sure you get the most out of your pedals and to make sure that they’re always working correctly.

For example, it may happen that the minimum pressure on the load cell of either the throttle or brake pedal already shows like 1 or 2 percent on the bar and stays there without you pressing any pedal or after fully pressing one of the pedals.

It can also be that, due to your seating position not being fully adjusted to your new pedals, your foot is already pressing down on the throttle or brake pedal when you don’t necessarily want it to. Of course, you can and should always try to find the best and most comfortable seating position with your CSL Cockpit or ClubSport Cockpit Formula.

However, let’s say you don’t yet own a super nice Fanatec Cockpit and you’re unable to get the perfect seating position for your pedals, and you’re already pressing on the throttle or brake pedal, so that it shows about 5% or even more pressure on the barometer.

In this case and if you want to get the most performance out of you driving experience, it is important that you set a deadzone, basically a new minimum pressure. This will make sure that you don’t accelerate your car when you don’t want to, and that you won’t slow yourself down on a straight, if you’re slightly pressing on the brakes.

To set a new minimum, you’ll have to put your foot on the brake pedal, keep it exactly at that comfortable and new minimum position, then click on the “min” button and wait a couple seconds. This will then set your new minimum pressure.

Another issue can be that over a long period of time and dust accumulating on your pedals, the maximum pressure of either throttle or brake pedal doesn’t fully reach 100% anymore. Just make sure to check your pedal calibration from time to time, clean the dust from the pedals and then recalibrate the maximum pressure via the Fanatec Control Panel. To do this, simply fully press the pedal and then click on the “max” button. This will then set your new maximum pressure.

Here's a quick step by step guide to calibrate your new Fanatec Pedals.

1. Simply open the Fanatec Control Panel
2. Click on Pedals
3. Press each pedal to see if they’re being picked up and check if the calibration shows 0% on all of them, when they’re not pressed and if they show 100% when fully pressed. If that’s the case, you can leave it like that
4. If not, then you can calibrate the new minimum or maximum pressure as described above with the “min” and “max” buttons.

If you feel like you’re having to put too much pressure on the pedal or the opposite is the case; make sure to play around with the Brake Force (BRF) setting in the Tuning Menu of your Fanatec steering wheel or via the Fanalab software. If you set it to 100%, you’ll most likely have to stamp on your brakes to reach full pressure, whereas if you set it to 20% you don’t have to press the brake as much to reach the same 100% pressure.

You can also tune and adjust your throttle and brake pedal for each game. For example, if you want to race competitively on F124 without traction control, it can be challenging to learn the progressive throttle technique to accelerate quickly and avoid losing traction and spinning the Formula 1 car. In this case you can mute your throttle pedal and create a deadzone for the first 5-10% of travel. This might help you gain better control over your progressive throttle application.

Find your next pedals on Fanatec.com!