Do you love sim racing enough to spend $2,499 on a steering wheel?

Sim-Lab has conscionable released a caller $2,499 steering wheel it claims is an “authentic arsenic possible” replica of the wheels Lewis Hamilton uses portion driving the Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One Team’s contention cars. It’s a beauteous portion of hardware to conscionable look at, but a reminder that getting truly into simulators tin beryllium unsafe for your budget.

If that terms tag has your jaw connected the floor, don’t fuss picking it up. You can’t conscionable plug the steering instrumentality into your PC and deed the simulated streets of Montreal. It needs to beryllium attached to a wheelbase, which translates the steering wheel’s turning motions and fastener inputs to a racing crippled portion besides providing unit feedback. Those tin besides acceptable you backmost respective 1000 dollars, and 1 isn’t included with this wheel.

What makes Sim-Lab’s caller instrumentality truthful pricey? For starters, it’s officially licensed from the Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One Team, who shared the machine aided plan (CAD) information it uses to physique the steering wheels for its multi-million dollar cars. Sim-Lab’s instrumentality is arsenic adjacent arsenic you tin get to racing with 1 without replacing Lewis Hamilton arsenic the team’s operator erstwhile helium moves to squad Ferrari adjacent year.

The steering wheel’s assemblage is besides a handmade c fibre shell. That not lone helps it measurement 1,240 grams, but it besides ensures it’s highly rigid, truthful vibrations and absorption provided by a wheelbase are precisely translated to a gamer’s hands. It’s not going to creak and flex arsenic you steer into a simulated country astatine implicit 150MPH.

Scattered crossed the instrumentality are 9 rotary dials, 12 buttons, 2 switches, c fibre shifting paddles, anti-static silicone rubber grips, and 25 controllable RGB LEDs providing telemetry information astatine a glance. If that’s not capable data, the halfway of the instrumentality besides features a 4.3-inch LCD show with information layouts that lucifer what Mercedes F1 drivers see.

To astir of us, it mightiness look similar an obscene splurge, but for racing sim fans striving to recreate an authentic F1 experience, the lone happening seemingly missing is contention technologist Bono telling them “Ok Lewis, it’s hammer time.”