A Formula 1 steering wheel

[rec]

I was just doing some more reading on F1 steering wheels and thought this was pretty f*cking cool. It's high-tech enough to be motorhead AND nerdy at the same time.

As early as 1992 a typical F1 car steering wheel had about 3 buttons and looked a lot like a normal wheel. Round, with metal at the centre to attach it to the steering column. Today they're produced with a cost of around 25,000 euros and takes 100 hours to make (2006 approximate).

McLaren engineer John Barnard can be thanks for most of those changes, as he was the first to introduce the padel-shift system for Nigel Mansell, and then many more buttons over many years. These included toggles and settings for engine mapping, traction control and launch control programs.

Here's a list of what the buttons on the 2006 BMW wheel do, and below that is an image pin pointing the locations...

1. Pit lane speed limiter
2. Differential +
3. Engine push
4. Gear upshift
5. Traction control +
6. Engine push setting switch
7. Clutch lever
8. Traction control
9. Team info inlap
10. Burn out
11. Multifunctional switch
12. Lambda
13. Diagnostic
14. Wing angle info switch
15. Clutch
16. Differential selective switch
17. Team radio
18. Traction control -
19. Gear downshift
20. Engine break
21. Differential -
22. Neutral
23. Display page change

[Wrathlon]

Almost as big as an Xbox controller.

[ResLo]

LOL

[Kagetsu]

12. Lambda

Just what's needed getting bread and milk from down the shops. ^_~