If
you have seen a steering wheel of a Formula 1 car, you might have noticed it is
more like the one in an airplane than a car. Steering wheels might be the most
important and complex piece of equipment in a F1 car, it does a lot more than
just pointing the nose of the car in the right direction.
F1
has come a long way from those round wooden steering wheels. Back in the day F1
cars were focused on one thing, power. More the power the engine generates,
faster the car goes. Although cars were powerful, they did not have the
technology in other parts to go with it. Standard brakes, standard suspension,
no differential, and no electronics. Steering wheels had only one purpose –
point the car in the right direction. However, as cars kept evolving with the
addition of new technologies more and more settings, that can be changed during
the race, were added to the car. These settings helped the teams to set the car
up differently for each circuit. It was fairly straight forward to do the setup
changes before the race started, but if you really wanted to gain an advantage
over other teams the teams needed to find a way to do all those things while
driving the car. That is where the development in the steering wheel started to
emerge.
Since
F1 steering wheels have somewhere around 180 degrees steering lock, instead on
270 degrees in normal cars, the steering wheels does not have to be in the
round shape. F1 steering wheels are more rectangular and feel like the ones
they have in the airplanes. In current F1 cars, all the settings that a driver
might need are on the steering wheel including the clutch and gear shifters.
Only things that are not on the steering wheels are the break and accelerator paddles.
Long
gone are the days when it was drivers used to be left with sore arms because of
just trying to hold on to the steering wheel let alone actually steering it.
Now before every season the grips of the wheel are moulded to perfectly fit in
the driver’s hands and all the technology makes it much easier to manoeuvre the
wheel. All Formula 1 drivers get at least 3 sets of steering wheels for the
whole season, costing around $60,000 each. This is not only because of the number
of buttons and electronics embedded into it but also because of the materials used,
research that must be put into it and its customised fitting to the drivers. One
wheel takes about 80 hours to build. Mechanical designers, electrical designers,
wiring technicians and drivers are all involved in the design and build
process.
There
are 25 sets of buttons and switches on the steering wheel plus the shift paddles
and the clutch of the back side. Five of those buttons are used to change the
brake settings; it can change the break balance from front to rear, increase or
decrease the amount of engine breaking. Three switches that control the
differential, amount of torque transfer between the rear wheels, which can be
changed while entering the corner, mid section of the corner and exit of the
corner. Then there are buttons for radio, DRS, neutral gear, start functions
and one even for the drink. One of the important buttons is the pit lane button
that puts the car into pit lane mode to remain in the speed limit. There are
also switches to change the engine and fuel settings which are displayed on the
screen. Yes, the steering wheel also has a screen. The screen displays most of
the setting changes, current gear, engine revs and much more.
It
is fascinating to see how much the steering wheel has changed over the years.
Modern F1 drivers have much more control over the car settings and its difficult
even to imagine how they are able to all those changes on the steering wheel
while driving at 300 km/hours.
Evolution of F1 steering wheel, Credit - Donut Media
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