Here’s Why You’ve Been Holding Your Controller Wrong When Playing Racing Simulators

Not all of us are rich enough to set up a full-fledged racing sim setup with a Moza wheel, pedals, and shifters. But we still want to race, and the next best thing after a racing wheel is a controller. 

The problem is that games like Forza Motorsport run on very complicated physics engines, and even a small amount of input can impact how well or poorly a card drives. And when your only option is a controller with a small joystick and triggers with a small travel distance compared to an actual wheel and a pedal, things get a bit tricky.

To counter the massively increased sensitivity that comes with having a far shorter travel distance on a controller, we can try to change our grip. Let’s look at what’s the best way to hold any controller when playing a racing sim. We’ll look at the DualSense and the Xbox Series controller since almost every controller is derived from it in some way.

Proper Way Of Holding A Controller For Any Game

You probably already know how to hold a controller the right way, but since I’ve seen people using extremely weird grips on their controllers, I think it’s best to establish the correct way to hold a controller for any game. Once we’re all on the same page, we can make slight changes to this neutral grip to achieve our racing grip.

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Controllers are designed in such a way as to snugly fit inside your hands. Forget the way you’ve been holding your controllers thus far and pick it up with the palms of both your hands as if you’ve never used a controller before, but don’t grip it with your fingers yet.

Move it around in your hands so that the outer sides of both handles of the controller settle snugly in the base of your palms. Now, without closing your fingers, just move the thumb onto each of the two thumbsticks and rest the tip into the crevice of the thumbstick. You’re almost there.

Next, just clench your last three fingers to grip the handles from the controller’s backside. Both of your index fingers should now come to rest on the triggers. Move the controller around a bit until it feels like an extension of your hand, the tip of your index finger can easily press down on the triggers and the bumpers, and your thumbs can easily reach the face buttons, directional buttons, and thumbstick.

Congratulations, you’re holding the controller the right way for every game, but the wrong way for racing games, but we’ll get to that later.

Why We Need A Different Grip For Sim Racing Games?

In racing games, there are three inputs that you’ll need the most control over; the race trigger, the brake trigger, and the steering input. Everything else you can stick over to face buttons and bumpers, including gear shifts.

For steering, most people tend to feather their joysticks in the direction they’re turning when playing racing games like Gran Turismo. This means that they slightly tap the stick in the direction they want to turn, multiple times depending on how much they need to turn. This is a highly inaccurate way to steer and can lead to your car losing control, especially when you’re driving a really powerful RWD car like a Porsche 911 GT3 RS.

To fix this and achieve more accurate and smoother control over our steering, just push the joystick up fully till it rests against the outer shell surrounding it. Since pushing upwards does nothing, keep the stick there at all times.

Now every time you need to turn in a direction, just tilt the joystick sideways and let the natural curve of the housing guide your joystick. Steering this way will give you way more control over your input and you can even steer minute amounts that aren’t possible any other way.

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For more precise race and brake input, we need to reposition our index fingers. When pressing the trigger with your fingertips, you’re using the joint in your finger to flex it, which leads to imprecise and jittery motion. To make our trigger presses more precise, we need to use the knuckle joint to bend our fingers. 

To do this, simply rest the meaty part of the lower part of your index finger (the first phalange) on the trigger instead of the tip. Try pressing the triggers this way and you’ll instantly feel like you have more control over precisely how much you need to press it.

The Correct Racing Grip

Now that we know how to get better input control, it’s time to combine it into a new grip. All you need to do is move your hands slightly more toward the top of the controller so your index finger can rest in the position I described above.

This way, you’ll also be able to push up on the thumbstick more easily since it’s closer to the joystick, and your index finger will be able to press the trigger more precisely.