The Goodwood Festival of Speed is a motorsports fan’s heaven on earth: Every year, impressive racing cars from the past as well as current machinery are not only on display, but also driven at speed, often even close to their limits. In 2022, Max Chilton set a new record for the hillclimb course in the electric McMurtry Spéirling fan car – with a little help from Fanatec SimRacing gear, as keen observers of the onboard shots will have noticed.
Setting an impressive time of 39.08 seconds to blast up the 1890-meter long hillclimb course, Chilton took the overall win of the shootout event. The onboard camera of the Spéirling revealed a familiar sight for many SimRacers: The small car’s steering wheel unmistakably featured the Advanced Paddle Module by Fanatec.
The module features four magnetic paddles as well as two analog clutch paddles. Now, in addition to being used in countless sim rigs around the world, it is also part of a world record. Fanatec is no stranger to its devices being used in racing cars, having designed the wheel of the new M4 GT3 in cooperation with BMW, the result being a wheel that can be used in the actual car and in the simulator. The same concept was applied for a Bentley GT3 wheel.
However, the APM was not designed specifically for use in racing cars. As a result, spotting the module on Chilton’s run came as a surprise to the Landshut-based manufacturer as well – as they expressed in a Tweet after the car’s first run before it broke the record. You can watch the Spéirling’s record-breaking run in the full YouTube stream of the Sunday shootout session.