Tips For Finding a Good Sim Racing Seating Position

Although my current office chair / stand setup is fairly comfortable for long sessions, I'm fed up with the flex and the chair and stand moving slightly (especially now racing in VR where I'm not sure if the headset tracking has drifted or I have!) so have finally ordered and 8020 rig and seat - can't wait to get it all set up, and these tips will come in handy...

I found this short Skoda Motorsport article useful for the initial seating setup: Sitting Like a Racing Driver. I'd been suffering from back issues early on and was using cushions to alleviate the pain. It wasn't until I added a little more recline to the seat that the pain went away. Gravity was now pulling me onto the backrest and into the base of the chair rather than me supporting myself upright in the seat.

One day I want to build it according to my tastes, those already pre-assembled are not for me, I prefer to take the measurements, buy the various components and maybe even save money, indeed certainly. But the problem is always the same: to do something good you still have to spend a certain amount, you cannot be satisfied with something that pays little.

Great article Mike, it's a very important topic that often gets overlooked!

I would also recommend reading this article in order to fine-tune your driver position: https://ricmotech.com/assets/images/driver-position/Driver-Position.pdf

Dirk Stormbadger said:

I found this short Skoda Motorsport article useful for the initial seating setup: Sitting Like a Racing Driver.

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^^ This!

BTW sitting in the Speed1 was quite uncomfy when I tried fitting it as flat angled as in the title picture of this thread. I had it angled waaay more, similar to the Skoda article with very good results! I had to extend the original seat brackets to get there mind you (picture here) and use some lumbar cushions from OMP for comfort (picture here).

It really depends on what you are trying to replicate: Rally - GT Cars - F1 - LMP. All have different positions.
The top pcitures are positioned too high imho. The middle pictures are a good starting point for most race cars and GT cars.

that Skoda link sounds sensible, also their illustration makes perfect sense for anything that resembles a "normal" road car, i.e. Rally, RallyX, GT cars etc. :

That's a very helpful article.

Eckhart von Glan said:

that Skoda link sounds sensible, also their illustration makes perfect sense for anything that resembles a "normal" road car, i.e. Rally, RallyX, GT cars etc. :

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According to Skoda Motorsport the angle between the upper and lower arm schould be 45 degrees. If their race drivers would apply to that rule, they would not have won many prices.

Many sources recommend an angle of 90 to 110 degrees between the upper and lower arm.

Another thing I would recommend: point your steering shaft to your shoulders (or lower neck). That way the distance between your hands and your shoulders stay roughly the same (and so does the angle of your upper and lower arms) as you turn the steering wheel. This will make it easier to push/pull the wheel with both arms and will be less tiring when driving longer sessions.

Rusty911 said:

According to Skoda Motorsport the angle between the upper and lower arm schould be 45 degrees. If their race drivers would apply to that rule, they would not have won many prices.

Many sources recommend an angle of 90 to 110 degrees between the upper and lower arm.

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Good spot! To be fair, the pictured angle and the number on it don't match. The picture shows more like an angle of 80°-85° which should be fine(-ish).

Rusty911 said:

According to Skoda Motorsport the angle between the upper and lower arm schould be 45 degrees. If their race drivers would apply to that rule, they would not have won many prices. Many sources recommend an angle of 90 to 110 degrees between the upper and lower arm.

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I think you're right, and the number in that article and diagram is wrong. In the image the arm angles look closer to 90 than 45 to me. Maybe the forearm is 45 from horizontal?

I have decided to build a Sim Lab P1-X cockpit. My current setup is like this.


I am 6'2"/190lbs and I was concerned when I looked at racing seats about the seats being small. I decided on this seat. It came and it does fit my azz.

Most people say that building a cockpit takes a lot of time. I don't think the time will be putting things together, it will be finding the best position for the long term. Articles like this help.

Good information there so I thought in case anyone is interested I would share this with you all. Like most of us my desk has to double up as the normal PC station for doing boring things like word docs, Excel sheets etc., and I got fed up with paying out for so called gaming chairs that lasted a year and then failed. After casting around the net I bought the drivers seat from a Citroen C3, with manual adjustment for lumbar etc., and made a wooden frame on castors to which the seat is bolted via it's subrame. It can still move back and forward on the subframe rail but is of course a genuine car seat with all the padding and support you would expect but it cost £80 off eBay via a reputable breakers, who removed the air bag, and didn't charge postage!! It looked good in the photos and was good when it arrived. I gave it a shampoo and hoover and it has now done well over a years solid work every day, either as a very comfortable PC chair or as a racing seat. The castors were the locking sort so that I can lock them when I have found the right postion for the sim and the seat doesn't move back under braking. Any movement forward or back can then be done via the seat adjuster. Anyway guys and gals just a thought for you - Happy New Year to all and keep gaming.

I always find this reference from Heusinkveld very useful.

DrRob said:

Good spot! To be fair, the pictured angle and the number on it don't match. The picture shows more like an angle of 80°-85° which should be fine(-ish).

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Skoda engineers skipped geometry at school.

unbremsbar74 said:

Oh yes, pure pro tip! Would have spared me hours. They make building the 8020 look smooth and easy in the tut videos, but in fact, it is not. I have done it completely on my own and was at the brink of losing my mind several times because things wouldn't fit or turn out as shown or I was hardly physically able to do it (holding something here, pushing something else there simultaneously, and using the allen's key with the third hand .. o wait!).

One more tip: Make sure you build your rig on a movable ground (big rug, blanket etc.) because there comes a point of no return when the thing will be too heavy to be shoved around.

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Heavy is not the word! I have an 80/20 rig with dbox motion among other things. It’s just to heavy and I don’t have a permanent monitor for it. I have to move it over to my monitor for the weekends.
Furniture sliders are the easy solution, but lifting it to get the furniture mover pads in and out is a whole nother story. I bought a car lift to make it easy. I lift one side with the car jack and insert or remove the furniture movers, then I do the other side. It works , but I would rather not have to move it. . Here is the lift I use: Pro-Lift F-767 Grey Low Profile Floor Jack - 2 Ton Capacity https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00BG6IJA...abc_VH0DSKT6AVZXJ3W7GA6K?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1

So much good info in the article and comments. I think it's important to know you have a lot more freedom in a custom setup. Whereas a prototype Group C car might have your seat practically flush with the floor of the car's cockpit along with the pedals... you won't see the same in an F1 car or rally car. You might not want your legs angled off-center to one side, either. I personally like to race a variety of classes and my personal rig tends to be a compromise to give me something close to the cars I'm racing (which tend to be in VR so visually it doesn't have to match any specific kind of car setup).

I ended up with something that looks kind of all over the place if you didn't know what I was going for. The heel plate of my pedals is almost in line with the bottom of my seat at the perfect heel-toe distance; my seat has a slight angle backward; shifter at a position for classic cars and late 90s/early 00s rally cars; hand brake to the right of the shifter, angled toward me (like a drift car).

What I'm getting at is use all this info in the article and comments as best practice guidelines and then adjust to get something that works for everything you enjoy.

Wilko Jones said:

I have a wheel stand that I tether to my gaming chair with a cargo strap. This setup is serviceable, but I hate spending a lot of time in it because; at the 2-hour mark, my knees are usually stiff. I talked this over with the wife and she knows I will be getting an 80/20 cockpit at some point in future. I'll be looking primarily at comfort and ergonomics. My only requirement is that I have casters installed on the rig. I play more than racing sims, and I want to be able to roll the cockpit out of the way when I want to play something else.

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gearwhine said:

Simple, get a playseat challenge. I am sat in it now typing this.

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My next level racing F-GT Lite just arrived.
I can't believe that it's around for a few years now and I missed it.
Playseat challenge is too flimsy for my taste and not comfortable. I tried it at a friend's house and wished for an alternative.
It's a bit more work to unfold it and pack it away than the Playseat but you can also only fold in some parts or only make it a bit smaller etc.
You can dial in almost everything! Pedal angle, height, distance, backrest angle etc.

It's a lot bigger though. There's an almost 30 minutes comparison video on YouTube