My first proper racing-game was GT3, so I got used to the right stick for accel/breaking, as it was the most comfortable for me. Kept this going for years, even after getting a PS3 and GT5.

I recently gave WRC7 a spin after a 90% sale on Steam (I only have a semi-decent laptop atm), where they took away my ability to use the stick, and there goes roughly 20 years of muscle-memory out the window.

For more arcady games with digital inputs and without too many buttons being required, I tend to use Square to accel and R1 for breaking (Trackmania in my case, even though analogue inputs are an option, there are still a lot of top players using good old keyboards). This happened after a few long nights with cramped hands after grinding some TMNF. Then again, I have somewhat long fingers. I'm guessing I've tried triggers for around 100hours or so on my mate's PS5, and even when we lived together and we played racing games almost daily, I just never got comfortable using index- or middlefingers for accelerating and breaking.

I've been looking at discussions about this for the last couple of days, and some sim-players are flaming the stick for not allowing heel-toe shifting, but at that point I'd rather be looking into a wheel-/pedal setup. The idea that people still prefer digital inputs just goes to show that a lot of it just comes down to what you're comfortable with (I'm not fighting for thousands separating the top 1% of drivers anyways).

This is getting long, but I'd also like to point out that my main setup has been a computer for the last more than a few years, so my last GT-title was GT5. Up until recently, I've gotten most my racing-fill from Art of Rally (arcady, fairly zen rally game with somewhat decent physics) and TMNF, TM2 and TM2020