These aren’t pedals, these are in fact 'excuse removal tools'. With a broad spread of mechanical and digital adjustment options in a package that just gets straight to the point, soon after I got my Heusinkveld Sprints I understood why these make such a frequent appearance in people’s pedal recommendations.
Links and Review Info
Before reading on, be aware that I bought my Heusinkveld Sprint pedals with my own cash and Heusinkveld have not had any say in the contents. However, the links below do contribute to my operating costs as a result of driving traffic to the respective sites. Using them helps me at no cost to you! Thank you for your attention.
Why Heusinkveld Sprints
If you’re a competent sim racer then pedals like these will give you the ability to be the best you can be.
If you’re just learning then whilst it won’t hurt you to have them, they will only be as good as you are. Same goes in the kitchen, if you’re just chopping potatoes up to make some oven chips then you won’t feel the benefit of a high end knife until you’ve moved on to chopping onions.
Heusinkveld Sprints are the chef’s knife; they are the correct tool to compliment experienced or passionate sim racers but they are still perfectly fine for people starting out with bigger budgets.
I’ve been sim racing for a long time and I think I’m fairly warm stuff by now, and I felt like I was starting to reach the end of the road on my Fanatec Clubsport V3 pedals after 2 years of valiant service. I just had a growing appetite for something more fancy underfoot - I just started getting itchy feet. Not literally, of course. Clubsports won’t give you that ailment.
So what would make someone choose the Heusinkveld Sprint pedals, given there’s an ever expansive choice of mid-to-high-end pedals you can select in this present day?
Well, it’s because of their reputation, which has been well established over the length of time since they first went on sale leading to their revered status as a solid choice for all abilities. These have been around for over 3 years and have become so well known you don’t really need to call them by their full name, just 'Sprints' is enough.
I am a customer just like any of you guys, if I see a lot of people over time say that Sprints are great pedals then at least when it comes to shelling out the cash for them, all I have to worry about is whether I want to pay that price and not whether I’ll be regretting it. They’re tried and true and very rarely is criticism ever a feature of discussion about them.
Unboxing
Setting hands on the box, one of the cool things about Heusinkveld is their presentation which is great at signalling that these are tools, not toys - function over frivolity. It all comes packaged in a cosy cardboard inset with minimal plastic or foam padding, there’s no need - these will survive any courier.
Stuff can feel dated real fast in the world of sim racing, but to me these look like they could have come out yesterday. There’s no expiration date on crisp, clean engineering.
Physical Adjustability
One such way that these pedals justify their heavier price tag compared to that of my previous pedal set is mechanical adjustability.
There is almost nothing you can’t mechanically customise with the Sprints. The more you look, the more adjustability you find, there are not many bolts on these that don’t lead you to something you’re able to tweak to suit your preferences. Whilst it ain’t a 2 second job to adjust things, neither is it a 2 hour job. You can do most changes in minutes with the pedals in-place, no need to unbolt or dismount them from your fixtures.
Manual
You can tell a lot about someone by the way they use a tub of butter, but you can also tell a lot about a product by the way they write the manual. The included document has all the essential guidance and information on how to adjust things and what to adjust them to in order to obtain the effect you’re after. The guide is far more helpful than you might expect - rarely does the motto 'Read The F****** Manual' pay off as much as here.
Software adjustability
The hardware adjustment alone is formidable but where things get really cheeky is the software control, by way of Heusinkveld's Smart Control.
Say hello to fully programmable pedal curves, a sporting advantage equivalent to having heat seeking boxing gloves. This software allows you to program your pedal behaviour in a way which makes it difficult for you to miss your marks.
For example, If you’re always pressing the brake too hard and you find it difficult to avoid locking your wheels, you can limit the maximum force registered to make it much harder to do so by accident. You can adjust the throttle curve to make response much sharper in cars where this might be of benefit, or less so in cars that have a bit too much power for their own good.
Whatever you want from these pedals, you have all the tools to bend them to your will. Heusinkveld have a healthy list of different SmartControl presets that you can download and apply to your Sprint pedals, each with a description of what sim and car type they’re intended for, along with some setup notes to help you understand the approach. There’s not hundreds so don’t get too excited but it demonstrates the attitude Heusinkveld hold, your pedals should be able to fit you like a glove. Or maybe a shoe.
Personally I don’t like to make artificial modifications like limiting maximum braking force as it feels like cheating but that’s me, there are loads of people that would appreciate this, I’ve made peace with leaving that last 1% on the table just so I can look myself in the mirror, but if you’re competing at the razor’s edge this is probably not something you can afford to skip.
How They Feel
Now, I haven’t bought an ornament, I’ve bought sim racing equipment, so how do they feel to use?
The best way I can describe them is clean, meaning they just feel very precise to use, very smooth and direct. Even if you’re coming from competent load cell pedals like I did with my Fanatec Clubsports, they feel distinctly more grown up.
There’s a feeling of closer contact with what you’re seeing on screen and I found braking and throttle felt easier to modulate and feather on the edge. It’s frustrating to try and describe it because it’s so hard to illustrate, but I felt a stronger belief that I was driving the expensive virtual racing machinery I’m pretending to be in.
These pedals help me feel like I’m driving something mechanical, as though there’s weight and purpose in the soles of my shoes, something that feels like a faithful representation of a racing pedal box.
Despite looking somewhat minimal and mechanical in build, they feel very luxurious - the throttle smoothly meets the backstop without any clacks or clangs, there’s just a silent 'thud' underfoot, rather than a metallic clang that you can get on cheaper pedals like the Fanatec CSL Pedals.
In terms of results, I’ve no doubt that the Sprints have made me more consistent. Consistency is the boring word for being faster over a race distance because your accuracy is better. Being able to stick it a tenth or two tenths faster on average per race lap doesn’t sound like anything to get excited over, but think about how many times you’ve been tailing 2 seconds behind a car in front and the gap just doesn’t shrink after god knows how many laps chasing them. Ask yourself then how much you would love to be a tenth more accurate per lap, how much do you want to see the tailgate of your opponents creep ever closer as you beat them on accuracy? This is the real appeal of high end kit, it’s all about achieving 99% accuracy compared to your opponents 98%, and when that happens you will always be breathing down their necks or keeping them at arms length. Ultimately, a battle for position often comes down to being a tenth or two better when you’re called upon.
It feels great to know that you have the ideal equipment, you’ll either be vindicated with better consistency or you’ll be put in your place with no improvement, but either way you’ll have questions answered.
However, unlike buying a high end wheelbase which has very obvious, forceful ways to show the difference between what you had and what you now have, pedals are not like this. They feel plush, yes, but the biggest benefits of pedals like these are only extracted with skill.
Product Variants
The Sprints can be bought in a few different variations depending on budget and requirements.
In the most minimum guise, you have the 2-pedal set consisting of just the throttle and brake. If all you drive is formula and GT cars and you have a hand-clutch on your steering wheel then this could be all you really need and is the cheapest way to get on board.
If you have a sturdy pedal mount on your rig then you should be able to just mount them directly to your platform without the optional Sprints baseplate. The pedals are individual units that can be positioned in any way your pedal plate allows, and each pedal is interconnected to each other by data cables plugged into the central brake pedal.
Then you have the 3-pedal set, that’s throttle, brake and clutch. As with the 2-pedal set, you mount them directly to your pedal plate as 3 individual. The clutch pedal is very good, very authentic and real feeling with adjustment of the spring force.
In some scenarios you may want to consider adding the optional baseplate. The baseplate provides you with the possibility to have a raised heel plate, which raises it up relativate to the pedals themselves and makes things more comfortable for you if you have smaller feet. The baseplate itself also provides a larger mounting footprint for your pedals, which can help limit flex if you’re using Sprints on weaker pedal plates by spreading out the mounting points and therefore spreading out the stress. Of course, having a strong cockpit is really important for high end pedals so look into it sooner rather than later if you’ve got your eye on these, the rig you see here is my GT Omega Prime and it’s rock solid thanks to the new version pedal plate. On the old version of the pedal plate which was not as strong, the baseplate limited flex - you can see it happening here but it would be far worse without that baseplate, so it’s useful for giving weaker platforms a helping hand.
Of course the final reason you might want the baseplate is purely for aesthetics, it does make the sprints look a bit smarter having the baseplate there, I’ll give it that.
The Team Redline Sprints are just the Sprints but with Team Redline styling, with a darker framework, cheeky red springs and Team Redline branding. Functionally they are exactly the same as the regular sprints, so the extra cost is for those that prefer the more aggressive cosmetics.
In any scenario, and I’m mentioning it just because, Sprints will not work on the floor or carpet, they 100% need mounting to something. And I do mean something solid.
Conclusion
Choosing Sprints over the numerous other pedals out there was an easy choice for me - there are numerous good quality equivalent pedals available for not too far off the price and many of them look interesting with a different take on aesthetics, but if you buy Heusinkveld then you know you’ll never criticise yourself for making that choice. In the end the choice will just come down to what you like the look of, what you can afford and what you hear others say about them, but if you set your sights on Sprints then I can at least now say from experience that you won’t go far wrong. I love mine and I’m certain you’ll love yours.
Comment on the Youtube video linked at the top of this post, and take a moment to read viewer feedback too, if you're in any doubt as to the credentials of the Heusinkveld Sprints! Buy them using the links below.
Commentaires