I have not seen any PC gamepads which use contactless technology.

The only two contactless gamepads that i know of were made by SEGA, the "Nights into Dreams" special 3D Pad for SEGA Saturn, and the bog standard SEGA Dreamcast gamepad. They use magnetic Hall sensors both for their long-travel triggers and for the analogue thumb stick. The stick assemblies differ between the two, but i'm only intimately familiar with Dreamcast one.

The Dreamcast pad centres rather nicely with a rather big spring, and it has a spring preload guide which gently nudges you towards 8 principal directions, but can make hitting an intermediate direction more difficult. The centring is not absolutely perfect because of tolerances between parts, but better than ALPS dual potentiometer, and the wear is almost non-existent, it doesn't shred itself. You can easily take it apart and lubricate it yourself, because the factory lubricant becomes sticky with time. The throw is rather large. The hat is small and not very comfortable, it can go between unpleasantly piercing and too slippery.

Dreamcast was certainly in love with racing game genre.

Don't believe the rumour that Dreamcast uses USB for its controllers. It's also a point to point network of similar bandwidth but it is not protocol compatible.

The Saturn pad doesn't contain a preload guide and i'm not sure how well it centers itself, i find the spring placement a bit questionable. I suppose it can work wonderfully, but i haven't had a chance to try it myself.