Ever since the beginning of the game, I, along with other pad players, have noticed that wheel players have a significant advantage. Initially, I observed a clear advantage in slow corners, where, d...
Ideas
I'm a pad player and i have found a significant amount of lap time and better tyre wear by changing my controller config settings in the menu. Don't just use the default one.
Pad will NEVER be as fast as a wheel. I don't know why people cannot understand that. The is simply far more control over how many degrees you turn a physical wheel over the movement of a 1.5cm thumbstick! A wheelset's pedals travel significantly further than a gamepad trigger. It's impossible to have the same level of control. Adjust your settings and find something that works for you..... Or just go and buy a wheel!
I think nobody is really asking for pad driving to be as fast as wheel driving. Heck, I'd say the closest we had was F1 23, and even then the wheel was faster, though by a small margin. (I'd even say I still prefer 23's handling on pad, 24 was rough but at least the front end was sharp and 25 is... not as good as 23, almost like there is some sort of artificial delay to controls... maybe it's just me though with "skill issues".)
I think people just want to stay competitive enough by driving with a pad. They can try to somehow compensate a lack of speed, but when you just have traction discrepancies, (major) tyre wear differences and some other things as well (as it seems), it's hard to even try to stay competitive with a pad no matter what.
And not everybody can just have a wheel, or even drive fast with one. Heck, I have a wheel, but I don't have enough space for it to use it all the time, so it's sitting in a box waiting for better days - for me, a guy who now races casually but enjoys some competition, driving with a pad is just faster and easier.