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, due to their much faster and smoother movement, they are able to rotate the car more quickly and get back on the throttle much sooner.
As for the pad, it has fluidity issues, since its inputs are jerky, no matter what steering or rotation speed is used.
Moreover, the pad suffers from noticeable mid-corner understeer compared to the wheel: because of this understeer, pad players can’t rotate the car as quickly as wheel players.
Additionally, since pad players rotate the car much more slowly, they can’t get on the throttle as early, which also affects traction.
Because of slow corners alone, pad players lose around 3 tenths just in those sections.
On top of that, a few weeks ago I noticed—thanks to a friend of mine and teammate in my esports team—that the pad has about 20% more tire degradation compared to the wheel during a race.
Even today, while watching a race from the RRS competition, I saw my friend on mediums only manage 7 laps, while another wheel player managed to do 11 laps and won the race because of it.
He even managed to get more laps out of the hard compound, while my teammate suffered a puncture despite doing fewer laps and managing almost every stint carefully.
There doesn’t seem to be any way to fix the tire degradation issue while still staying competitive, nor does there appear to be a solution to reduce the understeer.
I’m writing this long message to let the EA developers know that the pad situation needs to be improved.
Many people are losing their patience with being at such a disadvantage compared to wheel players—and honestly, I’m one of them.
I’m also very tired of this situation because both in F1 23, and especially in F1 24, I was one of the fastest pad players in the community, often beating wheel users who are now much quicker.
Please, EA, fix these pad-related issues—they’re ruining a game that is otherwise clearly better than its predecessor.
