F1 23 Wheel Settings Guide: How To Set Up Your Racing Wheel

Racing F1 23 with a racing wheel is one of the best ways to increase your immersion and the fun that F1 23 can offer. Of course, racing with a controller is just as enjoyable, and if you are racing with a controller, view our F1 23 controller settings guide.

In this guide, I’m going to focus on racing wheels in F1 23, and in particular how to set up a racing wheel for F1 23. I’ll run through each step from calibration, to configuring the correct settings and button mapping.

How to set up a racing wheel in F1 23

Before I jump into each part of setting up a racing wheel for F1 23 in detail, I’ll run through the process of setting up your racing wheel.

This step-by-step guide is the process you should follow every time you set up a new racing wheel in F1 23. It’ll ensure that your wheel is working correctly, is recognised in-game and is optimised for the best force feedback performance while racing on track in F1 23.

If you don’t already have a racing wheel, check out our detailed buyers guide on the best racing wheels for F1 24.

Calibrate your racing wheel

Now I will run through each part of setting up your racing wheel in F1 23 in more detail. And the first step after connecting your racing wheel and starting up F1 23 is to calibrate it.

There isn’t a traditional calibration sequence in F1 23. Some racing sims make you calibrate by rotating your steering wheel and pushing on each pedal, but F1 23 skips this step.

Instead, there is a calibration settings menu. In here you can perform a button test to check how your steering wheel and pedals are behaving. From there you can adjust a few calibration settings to manually calibrate your racing wheel in F1 23.

Performing a button test

Before changing any calibration settings in F1 23, you should perform a button test. This can be done by pressing the button that appears in the bottom right corner of the screen in the menu. Normally this is the select button on your steering wheel or controller.

After starting the button test, you’ll see three bars on the right of the screen. These will go up and down as you turn your steering wheel and press your pedals.

The goal with the button test is to ensure your racing wheel and pedals are recognised, and then to identify if there are any issues. While you aren’t touching any input, all three bars should be set at exactly zero. If they aren’t, then you’ll need to increase your deadzone.

When you turn your steering wheel fully one way, and press both pedals all the way, the bars should now read 100. (Or -100 if you turn your steering wheel left) If you can’t reach 100, you will need to adjust your saturation settings.

How to calibrate a racing wheel in F1 23

1. Open up your ‘Controls, Vibration and Force Feedback’ settings.
2. Click the ‘Calibration’ menu.
3. Next, start the button test.
4. You will see bars on the right of the screen appear. Press the throttle, brake and rotate your steering wheel and you should see the bars going up.
5. Turn your wheel 180 degrees left and ensure that the steering bar reads -100.
6. Do the same again but to the right, and your steering should read 100.
7. While not turning your steering wheel, the bar should read 0.
8. Next, fully press each pedal and make sure it hits 100, and that it is at 0 when not being pressed.
9. If you can’t reach 100 or the bars aren’t at 0 when not doing anything, follow our tips below to fix the calibration in F1 23.

---

F1 23 calibration settings explained

The settings available in the calibration menu are;

• Steering rate
• Deadzone
• Linearity
• Saturation

Each of these three settings (other than steering rate) can be changed for your steering wheel, and both your throttle and brake pedal. They do the same thing for each input, but each setting only applies to that single input that you change.

Steering rate explained

The steering rate setting is new to F1 23 and is designed to help those racing with a controller. The steering rate will change the in-game speed of the steering in relation to your controller input.

The higher you set this, the faster the in-game steering will turn from a neutral position to full lock on one side after you push the analogue stick on your controller. The lower you set this, the slower the in-game steering will turn.

This helps F1 23 drivers using a controller adjust the steering to react as slow or fast as required. This setting doesn’t affect racing wheels and should be left at 100%.

Deadzone explained

The deadzone setting in F1 23 allows you to adjust the deadzone at the start of each input. As mentioned above, this is useful if you aren’t seeing your pedals and steering wheel stay at zero while you aren’t touching them.

If at rest, the pedals or steering wheel is over zero, it means some input is being applied in game. This can be very detrimental as it can cause your DRS to stop working, and it can make your car drift to either the left or right.

You will want to increase the deadzone setting for any input that doesn’t stay at zero. Only increase the deadzone until your input is staying at zero. If you increase it past this it will make your pedals and steering feel less responsive.

However, there is one exception. Adding a little bit of extra steering deadzone in F1 23 can make your car track exactly straight while accelerating down a long straight. It can reduce any shaking in your wheel and stop your car from drifting to one side of the track.

Linearity explained

The linearity setting works to adjust your input curve. While this setting is at zero, your input should be completely straight. This means that the in-game input will mirror your physical steering or pedal input. For example, if you turn the steering wheel 25%, the in-game steering will turn 25%.

This is ideally what you will want, however adjusting the linearity can be beneficial in some scenarios.

Increasing the linearity will change the input curve. For example, with the throttle, increasing the linearity will make the initial pedal travel less sensitive. This allows you more control over the throttle while accelerating, which can really help to avoid wheelspin and oversteer.

In our recommended F1 23 wheel settings for most racing wheel and pedal sets, I always recommend increasing the linearity for the pedals to give finer levels of control.

Saturation explained

The saturation setting in F1 23 acts just like the deadzone, but almost in reverse. It will make hitting 100% input easier. Think of it as a reverse deadzone.

If during your button test, you notice that it is hard to hit 100% input, increasing your saturation can help. This is especially useful with the brake pedal, as some brake pedals such as the ones on the Logitech G923 and the Fanatec CSL pedals are quite stiff.

Increasing the saturation will reduce the distance that your pedal needs to travel before 100% input is registered.

---

Change the F1 23 force feedback settings

Once you have calibrated your racing wheel you can move on to changing your force feedback settings and optimised how the force feedback feels.

This is a vital part of setting up your racing wheel as it can dramatically change how your wheel behaves while racing and change the feedback that you feel.

Force feedback is the term given to the physical feedback that you feel through your racing wheel while racing. Your racing wheel translates the in game forces and physics to physical force using a motor, which generates the force feedback.

F1 23 force feedback settings explained

Before I show you the best force feedback settings for each racing wheel, I wanted to touch on the force feedback settings in F1 23, and give you a brief overview of each one and how it affects your racing wheel.

The first setting, the vibration and force feedback strength is a global strength controller. Increasing this will result in stronger force feedback, but can introduce clipping which is bad. Typically, it is recommended to reduce this slightly for most racing wheels.

There are also individual settings for different parts of the track. These include on track, off track and rumble strip effects. Each of these settings will either boost or dull down the force feedback that is generated as you drive over each different surface.

The wheel damper setting in F1 23 simulates the friction between your tyres and the track surface. Increasing this adds a sensation of weight to your racing wheel. But adding too much wheel damper can make your wheel feel sticky and unnatural.

The understeer enhance setting is an artificial sensation that reduces the weight of your racing wheel as you start to lose grip at the front of your car. This is good for newer sim racers but should be turned off when you feel comfortable behind the wheel.

The final settings are the steering lock or wheel rotation settings. These change how much your steering wheel needs to rotate to reach the full lock. For a Formula 1 car, this should be set to 360 degrees, which means your steering wheel will turn 180 degrees in either direction to reach the full steering lock.

Best force feedback settings for F1 23

Below are our guides on our best wheel settings for a range of racing wheels in F1 23, including those from Fanatec, Thrustmaster, Logitech and more.

• Best F1 23 Logitech G923 wheel settings
• Best F1 23 MOZA Racing wheel settings
• Best F1 23 Fanatec wheel settings
• Best F1 23 Thrustmaster wheel settings

---

Change your button mapping

The final step is to change your button mapping in F1 23. This will allow you to customise which buttons and inputs on your racing wheel control which settings in game. This is a great way to feel more comfortable behind the wheel while on track.

You can change any default button input, simply by scrolling to it, selecting it and then pressing the new button.

By default, there are lots of inputs that don’t have any preset button to control them. These can be mapped to different buttons and inputs on steering wheels that feature a lot of buttons and other inputs such as rotary encoders and joysticks.

To change your button mapping in F1 23;

1. Open the settings menu, then navigate to ‘Controls, Vibration and Force Feedback’.
2. Choose the racing wheel or controller that you wish to use and click ‘Edit mappings’.
3. Scroll down the list to find the input that you wish to change.
4. Click the input you wish to change by pressing A, X or the button you use to enter.
5. Then push the new button or select the input you want to change it to.
6. Save and leave this menu to save your configuration.

View our F1 24 controls guide to view the default button layout

---

Overview

Hopefully following this F1 23 racing wheel set up guide will help you correctly configure your racing wheel of choice in game. Follow these steps when setting up your wheel for the first time or if you need to set up a new wheel at any point.

---

---

Frequently asked questions