F1 Steering Wheel Explained - What Do All Those Buttons Actually Do?

[Music] f1 steering wheels are complicated objects and for a reason they are the main interface between a driver and a whole bucket load of potential setups so it'll come as no surprise that they are top secrets over a race weekend teams want to give away as little information as possible to their rivals hence all the secret party mode buttons however what we were able to get our hands on was Renault f1 reserve driver Jack akin to run us through the main differences between a current generation steering wheel and one from 2012 obviously this being a of an older wheel from the 2012 karts from the VA era we didn't have hybrid engines back then quite a few things have changed since then for one thing we've got a big LED screen which takes up a bit more of the steering wheel rather than this old fashioned but it's simple when it works but now we get a lot more information on our screen we get Delta we get great temperatures tire temperatures you know anything you want ready it's all customizable waist width this is a little bit more limiting the other differences generally on the cooker knob you have a lot more what they call PU settings showing you do now now as it is you've got the mix button and traction control which is outlawed now but now we have many many sub menus basically just to define how you want to have the recovery how aggressive you want the deployment to be out at the corner and all this kind of thing you also don't really have this button is actually a recharge button on the current wheel that's just when you've done the qualifying lap to recharge the battery you just press the recharge it slows the car down a lot but you have to keep the battery while stops generally like I say is fairly similar those are the main differences as Jack mentioned a lot of the buttons that he is about to explain still exist on a current f1 car so listen take notes as you're about to have a masterclass in how to work a Formula One car this is from the 2012 Lotus as it was then ran out which Kimi räikkönen was driving one with an Abu Dhabi so in the top left we got which is a bit outdated now as some of the things there are it's called multi map that's basically just equips that feature to get a range of settings into a place where you want them so it's kind of like instead of having to change each individual one you can do a quick shortcut there of is over sake again slightly outdated but was used for DRS back in the day and just a toggle switch on/off easy pRb you know I - you know that one does because someone's stick it over and it doesn't say what it used to anymore and I don't drive this car full-time but it does something probably to do over roll bar but I'm not sure that's a guess BB it's to do with the break bus is there are quick settings on the back of the stereo and in the car but again if you want to go deeper into detail that's how you do that oil it's not a button you usually want to be using it's to sort out your oil transfer yeah if you're doing that then something's probably gone wrong so we'll avoid that D is for drink and delivers nice hot water into your mouth because it's been heated up by the v8 behind your back now that says traction control system trim which is to do with the TCS mode traction control mode they're both linked obviously traction control now outlawed in Formula One but it used to be a feature and the driver could tweak it according to how responsible he wanted to be for his spin and the trim was just an extra feature on that another level of detail nowadays when we do demo runs like today we usually just keep it in the off mode is that's more fun revs that's basically a rev limiter again usually you wouldn't be touching that like showing the engineer would preset during the race you maybe wanted to you could be part of it maybe for reliability but it's usually something that you tune up through the weekend from practice who to qualifying we're obviously you ramp it up this is what we call the cooker knob which is most important rotary on the steering wheel as you can see it has quite a lot of different things on it a few things blanked out now but usually you always leave it in the 12 o'clock position and what the cooking knob does in conjunction with these buttons which are just plus one minus one it basically takes you for all the sub menus in the car of which there are many for example tire is a common one if you need to switch from dry to wet tires they have a different circumference so the engine has to account for that and that's what that was so you go from a dry tire to a wet tired just by doing that go back to 12 if you had a failed sensor you'd get big flashing warnings all over your LED screen to get rid of that you'd have to you get a message like fail a zero for off and you go fail up to four press ok switches off the sensor you can go back to driving sounds complicated but you get used to it that's what that does so a few settings on there that you would rarely use but you can change your display if you wanted to see something else you can change to a safety car mode to save fuel Aero maps if you want to be doing Aero cruises that kind of thing so then we've got mix mix again is more to do with the power unit and how they they regulate that again you wouldn't touch that unless the engineer tells you to and that's to fine-tune the as you can imagine the fuel mix in the car and what kind of performance they want to get from different points in the race so you'd be playing with that a little bit through the race exit it's a bit ambiguous but what it means is on the exit of corner it regulates that the differential so that's the tool that the driver would be using quite a lot and it's more up to the driver than the engineer and now how he feels so it what it specifically does is telling you how locked the diff will be on the exit the corner when you're on fossil so you can play off that as you wish one is completely open 14 is fully locked and very very solid and that's for neutral quite an important button if you're in 3rd gear or below we don't have to deal with the clutch or anything like that just press neutral and it pungho neutral fairly self-explanatory oK we've been through that's full of submenus box when the radio comes for you to the box to come into the pit lane instead of getting back on the radio and saying yep okay I've heard you you can just say box I've heard you confirmed and that will mean the mechanics are ready to come out and meet you in the pit lane our is radio and that's the toggle switch so a little little red light will flash up there to show you that you're on the air you just have to press it speak and then press again you do have instances where drivers forget to turn it off because it's a toggle so you can hear them breathing heavy swearing all about fun stuff sometimes but we try to avoid that this is clutch how aggressive you want it to be on the drop so if you want to be really aggressive to get a really quick reaction on the start then you can be more aggressive with it or if you want to just pull away safely out of the pit lane or something that no rush you can change it one is very aggressive and you can go all the way over to 12 which is not aggressive at all very soft almost like your Road car but not really because it's an open car and you've got the pit button and if you look closely there's a little source around around that very important because obviously when you're holding the wheel and if you get a bit of an oversteer moment or some like that we have had instances in the past where a driver accidentally pressed it to pit limiter button does an awesome save thinks he's a hero comes out with a corner presses the gas and he doesn't go anywhere because he's on the pit limiter so we have that surround just in case and again there's toggle switch 80 kilometers an hour or 60 if you're at Monaco and then finally we've got entry which is similar to exit is for the differential and again one being very open and twelve being very locked so the driver can just play with that as he wishes LED screen not like we have now in from the one that used to be the commonplace thing usually again you can change this but you'd have speed here your gear there and your lap time there or some form Delta these clusters would give you an indication if there was a yellow flag or a red flag or something like that it would start flashing at you so you've got no excuse if metal is screaming blue flags behind you only got the LEDs I'm sure everybody seen them on the TV on boards you usually get some form of green red blue and blue me and shield going onto the back we've got an array of paddles eight to be exact usually modern-day it's quite secret all they have on the back of a steering wheel but because this is an older one we don't carry any anymore how we've taken all the top-secret bits off but basically you've got your clutch paddles and they do the same thing by regulation why do you have to you might ask well it's because if you come into the pit lane and your box is on the right you want to be able to use the right panel because you go over like that if you are a different track where your pit boxes on the left then again when you come into the box you want to be able to pull with that hand so it's just to give the driver the option gear shift up-down very simple then these ones are modifiers if you prefer for example to have your DRS on the paddle you could just have it there and that could be your preference if you wanted to have a preset diff mode for turn six at Barcelona pull that one and the engineers can configure it these little ones back here which are a bit sneaky again can be done to whatever you want really they're free-floating paddles usually it's brake bias to a quick set so if you want to go half a percent forward half step back you often see on the onboard it comes up on the screen Hamilton going five percent forward for one corner versus another that's just and of course you've got the quick release in case it needs to make a speedy exit and that's just a central locking the other thing about these is if you ever see a driver who's just been taken out of a race he's you know really angry pulls off sterile ages flings it across the track that's 20 grand in technology that he's just thrown across the track onto the tarmac and probably broken a fair few bits cos they're not the sturdiest things yeah obviously we're told not to do that and that is a Formula One steering wheel it's an old one but it's got most of the same buttons and bits that you would see on the current car and it's quite complicated when you look at it but really you're only using a few buttons at a time and you've always got someone to tell you what to do in case you mess it up hope you've enjoyed and that's been why the ones doing will guide thing [Music]

Channel: WTF1

Views: 3,423,577

Keywords: f1, formula 1, formula one, f1 steering wheel, formula 1 steering wheel, formula one steering wheel, car, grand prix, gp, jack aitken, renault sport f1, renault f1, wtf1, matt gallagher, xmattyg, skysportsf1, sky sports, sky sports f1, highlights, explained, explainer vid, 2018, 2017, 2012, Lotus, Lotus f1, renault, f101, aitken, formula 2, f2, kimi raikkonen, steering wheel, f1 wheel

Id: A-QQ0z8yVVA

Length: 10min 45sec (645 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 27 2018