The company’s Cranfield setup is regularly used by professional riders, but not everyone has the versatility of their Yogic. Getting in was easy, but the rest of it was uncomfortably precise: I’ve raced various cars and driven a number of retired Formula 1 machines, and if the belts aren’t pulled so tight your eyes convex, then they are not tight enough. Here they are also inflated by those g-force airbags.
The seat is molded to fit your frame and body shape, so the driving position should be optimal. The pedals are beautifully crafted aluminum items and the pedal box can be moved forward and backward.
Now, most sims sit on sleds or hexapods. Axsim’s setup combines an extruded aluminum base and a steel tubular frame, and like the others, it uses an FIA-approved D-Box that simulates roll, pitch, and rise. But the killer USP here is that the entire rig can also slide sideways by up to 18 degrees, simulating the yawning motion that occurs during high-performance driving.
Visuals are provided by Samsung, with a choice of a 49-inch curved ultra-wide gaming monitor or three linked 4K UHD displays. The built-in audio is from KEF, using a Ci160QR Uni-Q speaker and a Rega io amplifier. Surprisingly, the brains are nothing special: a Windows Intel i7 PC with an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 (we’d expect a 3080 or a 3090 at this price point). Only one outlet is needed to power the entire device.
Wheels identical to a high-end single-seater race car, a beautifully made and expensive tool – with anodized switches to change brake deflection, differential, lap time deltas racing, etc. It is provided by a specialist named Precision Sim Engineering; Max Verstappen has a sim at his house, though I’m not sure he really needs more practice.
Axsim’s emulator is compatible with all leading software and our running sim PC Windows Assetto Corsa. So you can have any car you want, with any setup, on any track, in any condition. And the company’s offering runs a range of superior premium home entertainment up to a system that professional drivers will recognize and happily use. Note: You can’t connect this to an Xbox or PlayStation, Axsim says. Simulation development engineer Nikita Miliakov said: “You can get visualizations, but thanks to their closed system, all the dynamic data needed for pitch and roll won’t be there. , so the simulator will just stay static,” said simulation development engineer Nikita Miliakov.
All of this comes at a heavy price. The price for this full-fat system is just £100,000 ($135,450), but you can start at £39,900 ($54,100) and specs from there. A shortened version, GFQ Simulatorhas a lower wallet level of £16,400 ($22,234), while the third option is Between these two.
We start at Spa, home to the Belgian GP and a very fast uphill section called Eau Rouge. Car F1 pulls about 4g over the right person here; at Silverstone’s famous Fast Copse, the lateral acceleration is close to 5 g. That’s why F1 drivers end up with wider necks than what you’d find on a nightclub bar.
