Decoding F1 steering wheels in 2016

[mycadcae]

Looking more like gaming controllers, F1 steering wheels do far more than turn the tyres. So just what are all the buttons for?

If you've ever struggled to turn up the radio without turning off the cruise control, take a moment to pity the F1 drivers whose wheels make even the most complicated road cars look simplistic.

Looking more like a games console controller than a traditional steering wheel, it now controls so much more than just the direction in which the tyres point.



The introduction of the V6 hybrid engines for 2014 saw even more switches added to the wheels, with more and more in-race adjustments needing to be made by the driver.

But just what do all the switches do? Thanks to Honda, here is a little explainer of what Jenson Button and Fernando Alonso have to work with on the McLaren MP4-31:

But aside from fitting the buttons onto the wheel, there are other decisions teams need to take when it comes to the design. While McLaren, like many, have an LCD screen embedded in the wheel, Williams have built their screen into the car.

This is said to save them weight, but perhaps more importantly means the screen is always facing the driver at the correct angle.

- source skysports

[markc]

I wonder if Williams' decision to place the screen on the chassis was also driven by privacy concerns?
I watched the Bahrain race edit with the view just from the T CAM:

See: 2:40 marker for Williams and 0:42 for Mercedes.

I was fascinated by the different GUI designs the teams came up with to feed the info to the drivers via the screen. However, in Williams' case I was struck by the fact I couldn't see their screen. As it's in a fixed aspect, it can have a privacy overlay applied to prevent the on-board camera from seeing the info, where as the driver can see just fine, like this:


Actually, if you haven't seen that edit yet, I'd recommend it as it gives a good idea on what the teams think is important. To me Mercedes seems more refined: Red overlay on gear selection at certain points, flashing to a complete full screen time readout, back to standard layout with or without the red overlay, the layout uses most of the space (see Lewis' start @ 1:53). Compared with say McLaren where the icons look smaller, the layout looks more cluttered being concentrated around the top and side edges (3:22 and 4:49). Ferrari is a better layout, on par with Merc (4:25).

[hpras]

Overtake Button.... on a Honda???

[Vasconia]

Overtake Button.... on a Honda???

http://e2.365dm.com/16/04/768x432/honda ... 0411105600

And it works as we saw in Bahrein!

[Writinglife]

Is the McLaren-Honda Overtake Button only on Alonso's wheel?

[PlatinumZealot]

Dee dee's wet dream.

[WaikeCU]

It's overtake 'button', you know Alonso's teammate :p

[OneAlex]

Lewis wrote an article for BBC F1 a few years ago about his Mercedes steering wheel and how he decided to simplify it. It also shows Schumacher's old Mercedes steering wheel and Lewis' 2013 one to compare to the current ones as above:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/formula1/21885280

If anything, steering wheels seem to be slightly more streamlined these days.

There's also a number of articles out there talking about how different drivers have different set-ups (such as Lewis having more brake bias settings than Nico etc).

[PlatinumZealot]

Most of the present steering wheels are all derived from Lewis' "cut off" handle design. He used to sit very low in the car so he asked McLaren to cut off the lower ends of the handles so it could pass his thighs easier.