What Sim Racing Wheel Does Nico Rosberg Use?

Nico Rosberg is a Formula 1 World Champion, beating teammate Lewis Hamilton to the title back in 2016. He retired from F1 after winning, and since then has helped out as a TV pundit on occasion, organized events and fundraisers and also put a lot of time into his YouTube channel.

Although Nico Rosberg has not actually said in his videos which wheel it is he uses, it looks like he uses the Precision Sim Engineering GPX sim racing wheel. It does look like he has used the Fanatec CSL Elite in the past however, and it is unclear what pedals or wheel base he uses.

We will go into more detail below about what kind of videos you can expect to find over on Nico’s YouTube channel, before considering his setup and sim racing equipment choices. There doesn’t seem to be any information out there online, so this is really just a case of watching and learning!

The Beginning Of Nico Rosberg’s YouTube Channel

A Change In Careers

After Nico Rosberg won the World Drivers’ Championship in 2016, he decided to retire at the top. This surprised many butsome did expect it. It made sense, after achieving the highest honor in F1 to call it a day and focus on the rest of his life. But this did not mean he was going to get himself out of the public eye, as since his retirementhe has increased his presence on YouTube.

He started his YouTube channel back in 2011, with his first video being of a rally duel between him and his father, Keke, who is also a past champion in F1. He followed this up with short videos of himself before and after races, along with various other short videos on his life at the time. He recorded most videos in English and uploaded separate German versions for his German fans.

Growing His Audience

After his victory in 2016, he started to put more of a focus on the channel, and as his subscriber count grew and he had more time on his hands without travelling and racing, he could produce better quality videos more often. He started covering other aspects of his life, including holidays, new cars and everything in between, engaging more and more with his fans. 

The Last Few Years

Different Videos

The last two or three years have seen Nico take a different approach with his YouTube channel, focusing more on the ongoing F1 seasons. He has posted many videos of himself at races, talking to drivers, fans and various other people abut the races. He has also gone into depth with his own analysis too, which he still does from time to time.

He has shared his thoughts on some of the biggest moments of the last few seasons andanalyzed flashpoints and given a real driver’s insight into the interesting parts. He has also posted episodes of his podcast “Beyond Victory” on his channel, where he chats to some of the biggest celebrities about everting and anything, including some big names in F1 such as Mercedes boss Toto Wolff.

A Substantial Following

In his time on the video platform Nico has amassed a total of over 850,000 subscribers, and that number continues to grow. He also has a second channel, Nico Rosberg DE, where he posts videos for his German fans. That channel has a very respectable 150,000 subscribers, but it has only been around since 2018 and so is still fairly young.

But the main event of his YouTube channel at the moment involves his track analyses of the F1 races before the race weekend itself. This is where he goes through the upcoming track on a slow lap, going over what you would need to do at every step of the race in order to get the best lap time possible. He then does a fast lap, showing you what he is capable of.

Track Analyses

Aside from the slow and hot laps, he also goes over what he has been up to recently if he has any big events coming up, and he answers some of the top questions he gets asked too. But of course, the most important part is thetrack analysis, as it gives viewers a rare glimpse into how it should be done by a real F1 driver, albeit on a simulator.

But with sim racing growing in popularity year after year, this is useful to fans both for the insight and to better understand the race come Sunday, as well as to help them improve their own racing if they are themselves sim racing fans. So, this begs the question of what sim racing wheel Nico Rosberg uses, and what his overall setup is like.

Nico Rosberg’s Sim Racing Setup

No Formal Setup Reveal

Nico has not yet released a video or any information about his particular setup, as he just jumped straight into the first session on the Hungaroring before the Hungarian Grand Prix. However, before this he had been asked if he would get involved with the virtual F1 competition earlier on in 2020, which was being run due to the absence of F1 as a result of COVID-19.

His response back then was that he didn’t have access to a good sim racing setup, or he would definitely have gotten involved. Since then, he has obviously managed to get his hands on a good enough rig to put together some hot laps for his YouTube audience. In that very first track analysis, he showed off his view of the track and included his steering wheel, albeit with the brand blurred out.

Fanatec CSL Elite

This will most likely have been for advertising reasons, as he won’t want to give any brands that he is not formally associated with any free advertising to his hundreds of thousands of viewers. However, it is fairly easy to guess what brand the wheel in that particular video was, as it has the stereotypical outline of the Fanatec CSL Elite wheel, with the buttons in all of the right places for that model.

The rev lights both on the wheel and on the wheelbase are the same as those on the CSL Elite too, which strongly suggests that is the wheel he was using. However, in that video he was in his home, as you can see his trophies in the background and one of his children interrupt as he his doing his Q&A segment. For later videos, it appears he is elsewhere, using a different setup.

A Change In Setup

For these videos, he appears to be using a D-Box sim racing seat, which offers realistic motion effects as if you were really on the track. You can see this in his video of How to Master the Mugello F1 Track. The wheel he is using is not made particularly clear, as you can only really see the side and the top of it. However, you get a better look in his video analyzing the Circuit de Spa Francorchamps.

In this video, he shows footage again of his view of the wheel and the screen. This time, his wheel looks much more complex, and unlike a lot of sim racing wheels on the market. It has lots of buttons and dials on it, with a big screen in the center for displaying vital metrics. The three dials at the bottom of the wheel are key however, along with the yellow dials next to his thumbs.

Precision Sim Engineering GPX

These line up perfectly with those on the Precision Sim Engineering GPX sim racing wheel. We have talked in depth about this wheel in our article on the best F1 wheels, as it is the top choice for F1 sim racers with a big budget. We say this as the wheel costs a few thousand dollars, and they are tough to get your hands on as they are made to order, so they really are only for serious sim racers.

But this is the kind of quality you need if you are looking to perform at the top of sim racing, or if you are used to using the real thing like Nico is. It is unclear what pedals or wheelbase he uses, but it is most likely a set of load cell pedals at least and a direct drive wheelbase.

Final Thoughts

Nico Rosberg has put a lot of focus into his YouTubechannel since retiring from F1 in 2016. He has plenty of videos covering a range of different activities, and although it has been going since 2011, only recently has he started showing off his sim racing skills in his track analysis series. In this series, he uses a Precision Sim Engineering GPX steering wheel.