People ask me this more than anything else. Partly because I coach drivers who compete at factory and professional level, partly because the question has an assumption buried in it, that if you buy what the pros use you will drive like a pro. You will not. But the honest answer is still useful, because what the pros train on tells you what matters and what does not.
What a Formula 1 simulator actually is
A Formula 1 team simulator is not a product you can buy. It is a bespoke motion platform built for the team, usually by a specialist supplier or by the team's own engineering group, running the team's own vehicle model with tyre, aero and suspension data that is more valuable than the hardware it runs on. The driver sits in a real or replica monocoque, the projection wraps most of their field of view, and the whole thing exists to correlate the car's behavior with the engineers' models, not to make the driver faster. That is the part people miss. An F1 sim is a development tool first and a driver tool second. When an F1 driver spends a day in it, they are working as much for the engineers as for themselves.
The software is proprietary and the hardware is in the millions. Asking which sim F1 drivers use and expecting a shopping answer is like asking which wind tunnel they use.
What they run at home
This is the useful question. A lot of professional drivers, F1 included, run commercial sim rigs at home and race online in their spare time, and what they run looks like what a serious amateur runs, only with the corners cut off. Direct drive wheelbases, load cell or hydraulic pedals, a real motorsport seat in a rigid aluminium cockpit, and either a triple screen or a VR headset depending on taste. The brands vary and I am not going to put names on drivers I have not spoken to, but the pattern is consistent: they spend on the parts that talk to their hands and feet, and they do not spend on things that just look fast.
That is exactly the order I recommend to the drivers I coach, and it is why the rigs I build start with a Sabelt seat and cockpit before a wheelbase gets chosen.
What the sim is good for
I use a sim rig to prepare for a real car, and I am specific about what I use it for, because the things it does well it does brilliantly and the things it does badly can make you slower.
Track learning. The single biggest thing. Every reference point, every brake marker, every kerb you can and cannot use, every blind crest, learned before you arrive. When I turn up at a circuit I have never driven, I have already done two hundred laps of it, and the first session of the weekend is spent confirming rather than discovering. That is worth more than a set of tyres.
Procedure and rhythm. Race starts, restarts, pit entry and exit, what you do with your hands in the first three corners when the whole field is around you. The sim lets you repeat those moments until they are boring, and boring is what you want when it is real.
Braking discipline. With a load cell pedal in a rigid rig and a seat that holds you still, the pressure you learn is close enough to the car that the habit transfers. This is why I am obsessive about the seat, and why I sell a seat maker's seats. If the rig moves, the number you learn is wrong.
Consistency under fatigue. An hour long stint in the sim with the temperature up and no breaks tells you exactly which corners you get lazy in when you are tired. The car does the same thing to you and it costs more there.
What it is bad for
Grip. A sim cannot give you the feeling of the tyre through your backside, and drivers who only train in a sim tend to over drive the entry because nothing in the sim punishes them for it in the way a real rear tyre does. Motion platforms help, and the rigs I build with motion help a lot, but it is still an approximation. I tell every driver I coach that the sim teaches you where, and the car teaches you how much.
Fear. There is none in a sim, and a certain amount of it is useful information in a car. You will find yourself trying things in the sim that you would not try at 150 mph with a wall, and you need to know which of your sim habits are real and which are only possible because nothing hurts.
Setup feel. Sim setups transfer poorly to real cars, and chasing sim setup is the biggest waste of time I see in drivers who take the sim seriously. Learn the track, learn the braking, learn the procedures. Leave the car setup to the car.
What that means for what you should buy
If you are using a sim to train for a real car, or to be genuinely competitive online, the priority is the same as the pros at home. A rigid cockpit and a real seat first, because those decide whether the habits you learn are true. Load cell pedals second, because braking is where lap time lives. A direct drive wheelbase third. Screens last. I built the TPS Grid in exactly that order and it is the rig I put a new driver in. If you just want to have fun online, buy whatever makes you smile and ignore all of this.
If you want to talk about your own programme, real car or sim, that is what I do all day. Email me or, if you are near Miami, come and sit in one of the rigs and we will talk about it with you in the seat.