Sorry not sure I understand if you are saying these settings are placebo or not :-)

The "Drift" setting on the GT2 wheel definitely has an affect on how the wheel behaves, it controls how much "help" the motor provides in returning the wheel back to center... So for me it definitely helps in countersteering since I tend to do a lot of trail breaking and setup my cars with oversteer which I can then control with throttle.

So the high "drift = 4" setting above helps me catch the back end when it oversteers or the brakes lock during trail braking as the wheel returns to center faster when I countersteer, the "spring -3" and "spring damper -3" admittedly have no effect except on PS3, but I set it as negative value anyhow to avoid having the Fanatec check whether to do any fake "damping" or "spring" effects outside of what the sim sends, I do the same on the PC driver.

Hope that makes sense, you should be able to check that setting yourself and see how much of a difference it makes :-)

I did a lot of tweaking to come to those settings, and I am positive the "drift=4" is not placebo even in FM4 it really makes a difference to let me drive on the edge with no aid and clutch+h-shift+heeltoe, it is one of the main noticeable improvements for me between the Fanatec and G27.

I may be crazy but I am not that crazy yet, unless superstition can help sim racing too.

PS. how awesome would it be to have that changing weather and time of day effects in FM4, hope they do that for FM5.