Cube Controls: From bike shop to race track, and beyond

If you were asked to describe what Cube Controls does, most people would picture high-end sim racing steering wheels and pedals.

However, few would guess that the Italian company began life in the back of a bicycle shop.

“The two owners were very passionate for cycling and motorbikes, and one day they decided, ‘Why don’t we try just to do a sim racing wheel?’” explains Cube Controls’ Partnership and Social Esports Manager, Michael Teichmann.

Those two owners, Fabio Roberto Sotgiu and Massimo Cubeddu, co-founded Cube Controls in 2016 and have since established the business as a powerhouse in sim racing hardware, using premium materials and informed design to create quality sim racing products – and the company will be exhibiting its wares at this year’s SimRacing Expo, 17th – 19th October at Messe Dortmund.

Motorsport connections

But the firm has also successfully moved into motorsport and the automotive world, too, developing and supplying steering wheels for Honda’s latest TCR car project, as well as Mercedes-AMG’s GT Track Series and GT2 cars (the second sim hardware manufacturer to create a 1:1 steering wheel after Fanatec and its BMW M4 GT3 efforts).

Cube Controls has enjoyed a technical partnership with the Affalterbach-based manufacturer since 2022, which has seen the firm create the Mercedes-AMG GT Edition Sim Wheel and a special, 13-off wooden handled steering wheel for the Mercedes-AMG GT3 Edition 130Y Motorsport car.

“And that’s basically how we got our feet wet in motorsport, ” explains Teichmann, “And then because of this, we got a lot of companies knocking on our door asking if we want to collaborate with them. And together with the collaboration that we have with another company called Aviorace, we also kind of help each other out and expand into the motorsport side of things”.

And this is where Cube Controls’ expansion into motorsport really took off.

From bike shop to race track

“We’re making a lot of wheels for a lot of companies: Formula, GTs, prototypes and Hypercars,” states Teichmann, “So we’ve been very heavily involved in a lot of projects”. 

Naturally, the specifics of which racing products Cube Controls is involved in are highly secretive, but if you cast a knowing eye over many of today’s (and tomorrow’s!) high-profile racecars, you’ll be able to spot telltale signs of the Sardinian company’s design philosophy.

However, there are other motorsport projects Teichmann can talk about on record, including the earlier noted collaboration with Honda, or more specifically, Honda’s TCR car builder, JAS Motorsport, which directly led to the company’s GT-X2 sim steering wheel.

“So JAS came to us because we had a very good collaboration with Bebu Girolami [Néstor ‘Bebu’ Girolami, Argentinian racing driver and Cube Controls Global Brand Ambassador] and we started the development of the steering wheel for the [Honda Civic Type R TCR.”

“And basically what we ended up doing is now the Honda TCR wheel, and we said, ‘wait a second, why don’t we make it also for the sim racing version,’ and that’s what is now the GT-X2 is basically the same materials that we use for the real Honda Civic.”

Cube Controls also supports several other professional racing drivers, with one, Brazilian Stock Car Lights driver Bruna Tomaselli, taking advantage of the firm’s GT-X2 steering wheel to practice at home: “We partnered up with her since the GT-X2 precisely is very similar to the Stock Car wheel that they use,” emphasising the crossover potential between real and virtual equipment. 

Astra 

“It has helped a lot,” states Teichmann about applying Cube Control’s knowledge from motorsport into its sim products.

“I mean, we have gotten all the learnings from mass production and manufacturing from sim racing to put all this knowledge [into] motorsport,” he begins. “And all the coding, edge engineering, the design, all the precision and all the feedback that you get from all the [motorsport] engineers, from their drivers, from the manufacturer itself for homologation… the product has to be 100% perfect.”

“Astra will be the first example of it since it’s a brand new design and a new language that we want to incorporate and to show and slowly throughout the next couple of years everyone will be able to see everything what we learned from motorsports slowly transition into sim racing,” he explains, citing Cube Controls’ new sim-focused Astra steering wheel, which is thought to be the lightest in its class at 1150 grams, including its hub.

“In the case of Astra and in the case of the next products that people will be able to see, they won’t be overly priced, but it will be very good quality materials. And we use it in all the technology that we have learned from real racing.”

Lightweight

And with this extra knowledge, Cube Controls indicates that lightness and ergonomics as key facets of its real and sim steering wheels: “You have to have the perfect weight balance, you know, in the weight distribution. Because you can have a lot of that space in the middle, for example, of the wheel, [but] then that will be a little bit harder for you to feel the force feedback,” 

“A lightweight steering wheel has less inertia, so you will be able to steer and correct the car more quickly,” stated Cube Controls’ co-founder and Lead Designer, Massimo Cubeddu, in a previous interview.

“Furthermore, for the same reason, you will have a more detailed, faster and more precise force feedback,” he continued, casting further light on the company’s overall design philosophy.

The future

For those fearing motorsport will distract Cube Controls from sim racing, Teichmann is unequivocal: “We’re going to continue with our Cube Controls products. Like I said, Astra is the first one of many. 

“We’re going to bring at least two, three other wheels in the next couple of years, that is from that line and then we have our… It’s going to be like a racing line from products that have come from the real motorsport projects that we have been doing,” he explains, revealing that Cube Controls will create a line of high-end products derived directly from its motorsport learnings.

“So this will be a different price point for everyone, of course, but we just want to see how the public reacts,” Teichmann concluded.

Given the quality of Cube Controls’ motorsport and sim racing products up to this point, we think the public will react quite well at this year’s SimRacing Expo.

Save 5% on Sim Racing Expo tickets by using the code ‘TRAXION’ at checkout.