One trick that should be obvious with deadzones is to treat default-centre (steering) and default-end (throttle, brake, etc) axes differently. This is surprisingly overlooked in some flight simulators!
If you are looking at input support, will support for XInput devices ever appear? I use my XBox controller when I don't have time to set up the wheel, but with DirectInput the two trigger buttons only work as a combined axis. I believe it needs XInput to handle them separately. This is very minor though, so waaaaay down on the priorities :-)