[Donnchadh MacGarry]

Hi guys. Just out of curiosity, are some of you, top pilots and others, driving with an H shifter and clutch pedal?
Certainly better for immersion, but as I am already quite slow with pads, I never dared to race with my H shifter...
That said, I love vintage F1 series. So much fun...

I'm using the Thrustmaster TH8A in H-pattern and the clutch pedal from the 3-pedal set that came with the T300RS wheel I'm using. I would recommend the SHH shifter instead, to anyone thinking of buying a sim gear stick in this price range. The SHH shifter can switch between the H-pattern and sequential modes much quicker (no screws required depending on the face plate you use) and there's also a bit more feeling/resistance when making gear changes, although it still doesn't feel like a real gear stick. I need to rearrange my rig again to get that shifter setup, but I'm lazy so that's why I'm using the TH8A right now.

The clutch is definitely an advantage for race starts, I remember in the Estonia 25 series (which also used a H-pattern) I got a huge advantage off the line as that car required good clutch management or else the car bogged down heavily. I don't really care if its quicker or not to use a H-pattern and clutch over the course of a race. I got into sim racing to pretend I'm driving these type of cars, so using the H-pattern for the appropriate cars adds to my enjoyment. I still use the flappy paddle for the modern cars that use flappy paddles in real life. Luckily AC has a setting that enforces this automatically, so I don't need to look up which one is meant to be used.

One thing that I find funny in AC is when gearing up with the H-pattern and clutch, as I don't need to take my foot off the accelerator when I engage the clutch. The engine revs increase dramatically and max out as expected but the engine receives no damage, no matter how long I hold this (unless I set the engine limiter to be greater than 100%, but I don't do this at the moment). I'm not sure why this happens, I would have thought for sure this would damage the engine no matter the engine limiter setting but maybe there is something that I don't properly understand on how that stuff works. I definitely wouldn't do that with my car in real life, that's for certain. For gearing down I engage the clutch and do my best to use the heel and toe technique for braking and blipping the throttle, its a lot of fun when it goes well.