REVIEW - Heusinkveld Sprint Sim Racing Pedals

If seriously considering purchasing this product, we highly recommend you watch the video above. It takes you through every aspect of the Sprint pedals from construction and adjustment to the driving experience and comparison to other pedals within a similar price bracket.

Pedals are rarely a one-size-fits-all piece of hardware, so we’ve done our best to arm you with all the information you need to reach your own conclusions on whether the Sprint pedals will suit you.

The video also runs you through the difference between the standard and Team Redline editions.

It’s a massive video packed with detail so timestamps are included to help you find sections which answer your questions.

All three Sprint pedals utilise a load cell to measure user input.  Load cells are often seen in high end brake pedals where it is important to measure the amount of pressure applied to the brake pedal rather than a position based measurement as your would expect on a throttle and clutch.

The use of load cells on the throttle and clutch as opposed to potentiometer or variable resistor is good to see as it minimises moving parts which have the potential to wear out or change characteristics over time. While a high quality potentiometer that is protected from dirt and other contaminents is perfectly fine for a throttle and clutch, the use of load cells is still a noteworthy feature on the Sprint Pedals.

All three pedals are a high quality stainless steel construction with a combination of 3mm and 2mm thicknesses. The design is clearly optimised  to provide a sturdy build with no flex where you don’t want it and to minimise materials where possible and keep costs down.

All pivot points contain high quality bearing systems which initially feel very smooth with no binding or unwanted noises.  From our experience with the HE Ultimate pedals we would not expect to see any problems with these pivot points after many hours of use.  PTFE lubricant can be used should you come across any squeaks.

We were very impressed with the overall build quality of these pedals.  They are compact and stylish while also incredibly solid with no signs of unwanted movement or flex through the pedals and baseplate.

All three pedals have a large range of adjustability.  Consistent in all three pedals we can adjust the angle of the pedal, tilting them forward to accomodate for your seating position and cockpit specifics.  We can also rotate the face plate on all three pedals by 180 degrees which due to the off centre mounting holes affectively heightens the pedal faces by 20mm.

Each pedal is mounted to the baseplate or directly to your rig via slots on the mounting brackets.  The use of slots here gives you plenty of movement from front to back to have your pedals lined up exactly to your liking.

When mounting to the Sprint Baseplate, we have more slots which give us a large scope of side to side movement.  We were very impressed with the mounting and adjustment options of this peddle set which give you a lot more options and adjustability than many other pedal sets we have reviewed.

Throttle

A simple but effective design giving enough adjustment to suit a wide range of personal preferences for throttle pedal feel.
Available adjustments in addition to those on all three pedals are:
– Pedal Travel
– Pedal Force
– Spring Pre-Load

As you can see in the above shot, there is a bump stop which has 5 different positions. This allows the total throw of the pedal to be shortened or extended.  The bump stop is also covered in a rubberised material which makes the operation of this pedal extremely quiet.  That means there is a bit of extra room to squeeze the pedal once it reaches the bump stop, but this can be calibrated out to ensure you are getting maximum throttle in game.

The pedal force adjustment essentially tilts the slope of the pedal force curve.  The highest position being the hardest setting with nearly 3 times the force required as with the lowest position to reach maximum travel.  For us, the middle setting felt to be what you would ordinarily expect in a throttle so we are confident there is enough scope of adjustment for most people here.

The Spring Pre-Load adjustment nut allows you to make granular adjustments to the amount of force required to get the pedal moving.  This does not change the shape of the force curve as with the pedal force adjustment.
A locking nut binds to the adjustment nut to ensure the adjustment is not changed unwillingly.  This makes the included 10mm wrench necessary to adjust the spring pre-load.

Clutch

While fundamentally very similar to the throttle, the clutch has some important differences.
You will notice there is no pedal throw adjustment on the clutch, however there is the same rubber bump stop providing quiet operation of the pedal.

The clutch features a 2 stage effect as we see in many high end pedals including the HE Ultimate + clutch.  When the pedal is pressed, the arm at the back of the pedal pivots, creating a change in the amount of force required to continue pushing through the travel of the pedal.  This replicates the sensation of reaching the bite point in a real car.  While the position of the bite point can not be mechanically altered, you are able to calibrate the pedal in the SmartControl software to ensure that the bite of the pedal matches that of the car in your sim.  For a detailed explanation of how to do this, head to the SmartControl section of our review video.

As with the throttle we are able to adjust the Spring Pre-Load and Pedal Force.  The Pedal Force adjustment is limited to 3 positions rather than the sliding adjustment as in the throttle.

Brake

The brake pedal is one of the most important parts of your sim setup and is also very subjective to personal taste. We have packed our review video with details of the brake pedal so you can be as equipped as possible to decide if this will be something you personally like.

The Heusinkveld Sprint pedal set houses all it’s electronics within the brake pedal.  These components do appear to be quite exposed however are protected by an epoxy resin coating to protect the electronics from potential shorting.  The clutch and throttle plug in to the brake pedal via an RJ9 connection, and a USB B connection to connect to your PC.

Importantly this brake pedal will max out the load cell at 65kg of force.  For us that was fine even coming from the very stiff Asetek Invicta pedals. However we were quite close to the limit.  For some people who are extremely heavy footed, this could be a limiting factor for these pedals and may be a reason to look at the significantly more expensive Heusinkveld Ultimate + pedals, but for most people this will be more than adequate.

The HE Sprint brake features the same elastomer springs as are found in the Ultimate pedals.  These have proven to be an excellent spring which provide a progressive feel to the brake and do not allow you to over stress and deform them which could lead to failures.   We have liked the design of some other pedals which include some kind of housing around the elastomer springs to limit the amount of deflection possible, however these springs have been specifically engineered to not require any sort of housing to keep them within their limits.  Our extensive experience with the Ultimate + pedals leads us to believe this to be true as we have not had any issues with the elastomer springs in those pedals after many hours of use.  Our full review contains a number of comparisons between this system and other comparable pedal sets.

The spring stack which provides all the resistance in this pedal has an excellent amount of adjustability with the use of a combination of different springs.  You will be able to transform this pedal from very soft to suit a street car feel all the way through to quite stiff with very little travel in the pedal being used.  There are pedals capable of going harder than this such as the Asetek Forte Load Cell however the Sprint brake pedals level of adjustability is very impressive and will allow most users to dial in the brake just the way they like.

In total there are 6 different combination of springs available as follows:

Swapping out your elastomer stack to a different combination is quick and easy, which makes it feasible to make a quick change between spring settings when changing to a different car in your sim.  Generally speaking the more downforce the stiffer your brake, so switching between a street car and an F1 you will definitely enjoy the benefits of being able to change your brake pedal stiffness quickly.

At the end of the stack is a small metal spring which provides a recreation of the throw in a brake pedal before your pads make contact with the rotor.  This provides a little extra feeling for light braking applications and increases the overall immersion as it is quite an authentic feel.
The amount of “Uptake” as well call it, is adjustable via the spring pre-load nut.  As you wind in the pre-load nut and shorten the stack, the uptake spring will be the first of the springs to compress resulting in a smaller uptake distance.

The overall feel of this brake is very smooth and provides a high quality feel which provides everything you need to drive fast.  The springs are very progressive which gives a very well defined threshold point.  This is very important in setting your muscle memory to be able to hit you optimum braking force consistently.

SmartControl Software

The SmartControl software gives you a detailed and simple to use way of fine tuning your pedals. You will first set your minimum and maximum points for each pedal much like in the calibration tool of gases like iRacing, and then have the ability to make minor adjustments and add values for min and max dead zones, as well as curve mapping for each pedal.

A standout feature for Heusinkveld pedals for some time now has been the ability to save your calibration settings directly to the pedals themselves, meaning that the signal coming from the pedals to the PC is already set to your liking.

This is an important factor when using sim titles that do not recognise windows based calibration. Once you have fine tuned your calibration in SmartControl and saved it to the pedals, you know that your exact same calibration settings will be carried over to any sim title you are using or if you need to re-calibrate your wheel and don’t want to lose your pedal settings.  This ensured consistency in your calibration is vital in building up good muscle memory.

OVERALL IMPRESSIONS

Having had such a good experience with the HE Ultimate + Pedals we were really hoping these significantly cheaper pedals would provide a similar experience seeing as they take on a lot of similar design elements as the Ultimates. And they certainly have.

These pedals represent a very strong sweet spot when it comes to sim racing pedals.  While there are benefits to some more expensive pedal sets, such as hydraulics, once you get beyond the level of Sprint pedals, you need to make a significant investment for small improvements in driving experience.

Overall these have provided an excellent experience all the way from opening up the boxes, through installation and mounting all the way to driving.

Make sure to check out our complete summary in the conclusion of our full review, including a detailed comparison to a number of other pedal sets.