Fanatec ClubSport Steering Wheel GT3 for Xbox Review

Fanatec’s ClubSport Steering Wheel GT3 for Xbox is a three-part build – you get the GT3 wheel rim, the ClubSport Universal Hub V2 for Xbox, and a QR2 quick release. The bundle costs $499.98 and what arrives is a 318mm rubber-gripped GT3 rim that bolts onto a composite / aluminium hub with magnetic shifter paddles, 16 buttons, and Xbox compatibility built in. I finished assembling mine this morning and I’ve already done about six hours of iRacing with it. Coming from the CSL GT3 I reviewed last year, the step up in feel is hard to overstate – though the build process had a few moments that tested my patience.

Technical Specifications

So this bundle – and this confused me at first too – is actually three separate products packaged together under one SKU (SW_CS_GT3_UHX_QR2). You get the ClubSport Wheel Rim GT3 itself, the ClubSport Universal Hub V2 for Xbox, and a QR2 Wheel-Side quick release. Oh and you get some excellent button covers and labels thrown in, too. Fanatec’s product page doesn’t lay this out particularly clearly, so I’ve pulled all the specs into one table below.

Specification	Value
Bundle SKU	SW_CS_GT3_UHX_QR2
Bundle Price	$499.98
Wheel Diameter	318mm
Rim Weight	700g (rim only)
Hub Weight	2.3kg (with QR2)
Grip Material	Overmoulded rubber
Hub Front Plate	Carbon fibre
Total Buttons	16
Shifter Paddles	ClubSport Magnetic Paddle Module (preinstalled)
Quick Release	QR2 Wheel-Side (included)
Navigation	7-way FunkySwitch
Display	3-digit LED
Bolt Patterns	6x70mm and 3x50mm
Rim Mounting	M5x25mm bolts, 6-bolt pattern
Hub Dimensions	345 x 230 x 145mm
Platform	Xbox + PC (Xbox security chip)
Wheelbase Compatibility	All Fanatec wheelbases via QR2
Extras	10 sticker sheets for button customisation

The 318mm diameter is 18mm bigger than the CSL GT3 rim which I didn’t think I’d notice that difference much, but it caught me off guard – iyt’s a really different animal. My hands sit wider on this rim and there’s more leverage through longer corners – places like Maggotts-Becketts at Silverstone where you’re feeding the wheel hand over hand. With 2.3kg of hub weight behind it, the whole thing has a planted, substantial feel that I never got from the CSL tier.

Compatibility and Ecosystem

People keep asking me whether this works with their particular Fanatec base, so here’s the short answer: yes, all of them. CSL DD, DD Pro, ClubSport DD, Podium DD1, DD2 – every Fanatec wheelbase currently on sale takes this wheel straight out of the box because the QR2 quick release is bundled in. Bolt it on and go.

Because there’s an Xbox security chip baked in, you get native support on both Xbox Series X/S and PC without any faffing about. If you only race on PC, Fanatec sell a non-Xbox variant (SKU: SW_CS_GT3_UH) for $469.99 – thirty quid less. I went Xbox because I’ve got a Series X collecting dust and figured I might use it one day (more on console gaming here). If you’re dead certain you’ll never touch a console, save the money, but honestly thirty dollars isn’t much for an option you might want later.

One thing I should flag – this is Fanatec ecosystem only. The QR2 won’t bolt onto a Simucube or Simagic wheelbase without a third-party adapter, and even with one you’d lose the electronics (buttons, display, LEDs, all of it). If you’re on Simucube or Simagic, honestly, this review probably isn’t much use to you. For everyone else sticking with Fanatec: connection is USB for both PC and Xbox, and you get full FanaLab software support covering button mapping, LED configuration, and the tuning menu.

Assembly: Building the GT3 Wheel

Fair warning – this wheel doesn’t arrive ready to race. When my order turned up there were three separate boxes on the doorstep: the GT3 wheel rim in one, the Universal Hub V2 for Xbox with QR2 in another, and a third bag absolutely crammed with bolts, sticker sheets, tools, and coloured button caps. Kitchen table cleared, coffee made, let’s go.

Start to finish, I had it built in about 45 minutes, and that’s with prior Fanatec hub experience. First-timers should budget closer to an hour. None of it is technically hard – the fiddly bits just take longer than you’d expect, especially if you try to rush through the ribbon cable section.

The biggest time sink was stripping down the Xbox Universal Hub to get the buttons across to the GT3 adapter plate. You can’t just bolt the rim straight on – the hub needs stripping back, then you transfer the button PCBs onto the adapter plate that ships with the GT3 rim, wire everything back up, and put the whole sandwich together again. I had about fifteen tiny screws and two ribbon cables spread across the table at one point and briefly wondered if I’d remember where they all went.

Right, this next bit nearly caught me out and I want to make sure it doesn’t catch you out too. The QR2 kit ships with two sets of bolts and the longer ones will go straight through the back of the hub and into the LED screen if you’re not paying attention. Kireth caught this in his build video on YouTube and showed exactly what happens – the bolt tips push into the display housing. I measured mine before tightening and the shorter set cleared fine. Fanatec don’t flag this anywhere in the manual, which is a proper oversight on their part.

The customisation part quite strong! Fanatec include 10 sheets of stickers for the button caps, and there’s a bag of different coloured caps to choose from. My wife walked past three times while I was fiddling with cap colours and by the third visit she just shook her head. But the end result is a wheel that looks like mine and not like everyone else’s on Reddit, and given how many hours I spend looking at this thing, that actually matters to me.

Build Quality

Picking this thing up off the table once it was fully assembled, my first reaction was just how much heft it has. The hub alone weighs 2.3kg, then you’ve got 700g of rim on top – so you’re looking at roughly 3kg of wheel hanging off your wheelbase. Mounted on my ClubSport DD the weight actually works in its favour – everything feels solid, grounded. On a CSL DD running at the base 5Nm? Different story entirely – that motor would be working noticeably harder to swing 3kg around compared to the lighter CSL GT3.

The carbon fibre front plate on the Universal Hub V2 is actual carbon fibre – not a decorative wrap over plastic, which is what I half expected at this price point. It’s properly stiff when you press on it, and the weave pattern looks genuinely good under lighting. Karl Gosling over at simracing-pc.de made the same observation in his review and I agree with him completely. Holding the CSL hub and the ClubSport hub side by side, the material quality gap is obvious straight away.

The rubber grips are overmoulded onto the rim – proper rubber, not a thin coating that’ll wear through and go shiny after six months of racing. I did a couple of hours with dry hands and grip was excellent the whole time, no slipping on fast corrections. Both sides have these little thumb rests moulded in and after three laps at Bathurst my hands had found their spot and stayed put – forty minutes of racing, never shuffled my grip once. At 318mm it’s big enough to feel like a proper GT3 wheel but my SimHub dashboard overlay is still fully visible, no obstruction at all.

Buttons are fine – decent click, they do what they need to – but picking the thing up and pressing a few, the plastic does jar a bit against the carbon fibre and rubber everywhere else. Not something I’d hold against it, mind. You stop noticing once you’re actually racing because you’re pressing them by feel anyway, but side by side with the rest of the build quality, the button plastic is the one area where I thought “yeah, they could’ve spent a bit more here.”

Performance: How It Drives

I loaded up Spa in iRacing for my first stint and within half a lap I could feel the difference from the CSL GT3. The extra 18mm of diameter gives you finer control through mid-corner adjustments – small steering inputs at Pouhon felt more deliberate, more measured. The hub weight helps too, because force feedback detail that the lighter CSL GT3 sometimes lost in translation comes through clearly here. Kerbs at La Source, the rear stepping out under braking, the weight shifting as I got on the power at the exit of Blanchimont – more texture across the board.

Going from CSL paddles to these magnetic shifter paddles was probably the single biggest surprise in the whole build. They’re so much quieter than what I’m used to – the click is clean and short with barely any travel, and the plasticky rattle that I’d grown to tolerate on the basic paddle modules is completely gone. I did a two-hour endurance practice session last night and at no point did the paddle noise bother me, which is something I genuinely couldn’t say about my old setup.

The 7-way FunkySwitch – Fanatec’s little joystick nub for menus – I ended up using quite a lot for traction control tweaks during practice. It needs a proper firm push to register, which I actually prefer – I’ve never accidentally hit it during a race and I don’t think I ever will. The 3-digit LED display I’ve got mapped to gear number in FanaLab right now. It’s a small screen and it won’t replace SimHub or a dedicated dash, but for a quick downward glance to check what gear you’re in, it does the job.

One thing cropped up when I pushed the force feedback higher that’s worth flagging. Above about 12 to 13Nm on my ClubSport DD, there’s an occasional resonance through the hub – not vibration exactly, more a hollow quality at certain frequencies. I noticed it most over the aggressive kerbs at Monza’s second chicane and the heavy rumble strip at Variante della Roggia. Dropping the FFB down a notch to about 11Nm or bumping the damping up a couple of points in FanaLab sorted it for me. Kireth flagged the same thing in his build video, which reassured me that it’s a characteristic of how this hub and rim combo behaves rather than something wrong with mine specifically.

Issues and Things to Know

Assembly time is the biggest barrier and I don’t think Fanatec do enough to prepare buyers for it. First-time Fanatec hub builders will probably find the whole “open the hub and move the button PCBs across” bit pretty intimidating. The included instructions are adequate but they skip over some of the fiddlier bits, and working with the ribbon cables inside the hub really does need good lighting and steady hands. Best thing I can tell you is to watch Kireth’s build video on YouTube before you crack open the boxes – saved me about twenty minutes of head-scratching and it’ll do the same for you.

I mentioned the QR2 bolt length thing already but it bears repeating because I nearly made the mistake myself. Nowhere in the manual, nowhere on the packaging, is there any warning that the longer bolts in the QR2 kit can crack the LED screen. Only reason I knew to look was Kireth’s video. Use the shorter set or grab a ruler and measure clearance before you start cranking. Fanatec really need to stick a warning label on the bolt bag – this is the kind of thing that ends up as a frustrated Reddit post.

The weight thing deserves a bit more context, particularly if you’re on a CSL DD. At roughly 3kg assembled, this wheel asks more of a 5Nm motor than the lighter CSL GT3 does. Where you’ll notice it is fast directional changes – catching a snap of oversteer or threading through a tight chicane like the second one at Monza. I borrowed a mate’s CSL DD for an hour to test this and the inertia was definitely more present. Once you’re at 8Nm or above the motor doesn’t break a sweat with this weight, so it’s really only a consideration at the entry end.

Remember the FunkySwitch needing a proper shove to register? Came back to bite me at Bathurst, that did. Tried adjusting brake bias mid-race going into the Chase, fumbled the switch, and nearly stuck it in the wall. Brake bias now lives on one of the rotary encoders where I can tweak it without taking my eyes off the road.

How It Compares

I reviewed the CSL Steering Wheel GT3 a while back and that’s the comparison most people will be making. At roughly half the price (~$200 for the CSL GT3 complete), the CSL version is a perfectly decent entry point and I said as much in that review. But having now used both back to back on the same wheelbase, the gap in feel is bigger than the gap in price suggests. Carbon fibre hub instead of plastic, magnetic paddles instead of the rattly basic ones, 18mm more diameter, and noticeably sharper force feedback. If the budget stretches to it, the ClubSport is what I’d go for every time.

Against the PC-only variant (ClubSport Steering Wheel GT3 at $469.99) – it’s the exact same wheel, thirty dollars cheaper, minus the Xbox chip. I covered this up in the compatibility section already. Basically, if you’re dead certain you’ll never plug into an Xbox, take the saving. Otherwise the Xbox version is cheap insurance for future flexibility.

Fanatec also do a QR2 Pro version of the hub at $445.99 compared to the $395.99 standard QR2 I bought. The Pro adds a stiffer quick release connection that eliminates the tiny bit of play you can feel in the standard QR2. On my ClubSport DD I genuinely can’t feel the difference enough to justify the extra fifty dollars, but if you’re running a Podium DD1 or DD2 at 20Nm, the rigidity would matter more.

Outside of Fanatec, the Moza ES and GS wheels sit in roughly the same price bracket, and Simagic’s GT1-R is another one I’ve seen people cross-shop. I don’t own any of those so I’m not going to bluff my way through a comparison – that’d take proper seat time with each one, ideally on matching wheelbases, and I haven’t done that work yet. What I will say is that six hours into owning this thing – I’ve really missed the better Fanatec ecosystem product lineup.

Who Should Buy This

Fanatec owners who want a proper GT3-style wheel with build quality that matches the ClubSport name – this is what I’d buy, and it’s what I did buy. The bundle at $499.98 makes sense if you’re running a CSL DD Pro or above, and coming from a CSL-tier wheel the upgrade hit me the moment I loaded into my first session.

I’d skip it if you’re running a CSL DD at the base 5Nm and budget is a factor – the 3kg weight will fight you in fast direction changes, and the CSL GT3 does a respectable job at half the cost. I’d also skip it if the idea of spending 45 minutes dismantling a hub and transferring button PCBs fills you with dread. Took me three-quarters of an hour, a Phillips head, and a fair amount of squinting at ribbon cables on a Saturday morning when I’d rather have been on track.

Pros

• Carbon fibre hub plate is the real deal and the build quality shows it
• The 318mm rubber-gripped rim is one of the best feeling rims I’ve used at this price – proper overmoulded rubber that won’t wear off
• Magnetic shifter paddles are a genuine upgrade – I can actually do long stints without paddle noise winding me up
• 16 buttons plus the sticker sheets and coloured caps let you make it your own
• $499.98 for the bundle is basically the same as buying rim and hub separately
• Xbox and PC from one wheel – useful even if you’re PC-only right now

Cons

• Budget 45 minutes minimum to build it, probably closer to an hour if you’ve never cracked open a Fanatec hub before
• The QR2 bolt length issue can crack the LED screen and Fanatec don’t warn you about it anywhere – watch Kireth’s video first
• Weighs about 3kg built up, and on a CSL DD at 5Nm you’ll feel that mass fighting you in quick direction changes
• FunkySwitch needs a proper shove to register, which is rubbish for mid-race tweaks – I remapped to the rotary encoders
• Button caps feel a bit plasticky next to the carbon fibre and rubber everywhere else

Pricing and Where to Buy

My order came to $499.98 for the Xbox bundle direct from Fanatec, and they had it in stock at the time of writing. Bit annoying – I checked after ordering and the rim ($99.99) plus hub ($395.99) separately adds up to $495.98, which is four dollars less than what I paid for the bundle. PC-only buyers can grab theirs for $469.99 without the Xbox chip. Over here in the UK that works out to about £367 for the Xbox version, and right now it’s Fanatec direct or nothing – none of the third-party shops I checked had it in stock yet.

About the ClubSport Wheel Rim GT3

I wanted to give the GT3 rim its own space here because Fanatec sell it on its own for $99.99, and honestly it might be the best value bit of kit in their entire catalogue right now. Already own a Universal Hub from a few years back? Works with any of them. Stick this rim on and it’s like getting a new wheel for under a hundred quid. Danny Lee put it well on his YouTube channel – “all function, no form.” No alcantara, no leather, no fancy carbon accents on the rim itself. It’s 318mm of rubber that grips properly and doesn’t pretend to be anything fancier than it is.

Fanatec also sell an Endurance variant (ClubSport Wheel Rim GT3 Endurance at $189.99) which gets you alcantara grips and a slightly different shape. I haven’t tried the Endurance version so grain of salt here, but nearly double the money for what’s basically a different grip material and shape? Tough to justify that, personally. Plus alcantara goes bald after a year or two – I’ve watched it happen on two other wheels I’ve owned. For most GT3 racing, I’d get the standard rim at $99 and spend the saving on something else.

Video Review

That’s Kireth’s build and review video up there. He goes through the full assembly step by step and has some decent longer-term thoughts after a few weeks of use. The bit where he demonstrates what the wrong QR2 bolt length does to the LED screen is the reason I checked mine before tightening – genuinely worth the seventeen minutes if you’re about to build one of these.

Still weighing up ClubSport vs CSL? I’ve got a full Fanatec buyer’s guide that walks through wheelbases, pedals, and the rest of the lineup with what everything costs right now.

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Topic: Fanatec Sim Racing Wheels