F1 steering wheel is a complicated, fascinating piece of technology

MIAMI GARDENS — At first glance, the Formula 1 steering wheel, a bit of a misnomer because its shape resembles a square or rectangle rather than a circle, looks like it belongs on a commercial airliner or a high-tech video game with its dizzying array of multi-colored buttons and dials.

It’s such a high-tech piece of equipment, filled with so many proprietary corporate secrets and driver preferences, that it turns out that obtaining a photo of a 2026 F1 steering wheel, the type that drivers will be using in Sunday’s Miami Grand Prix, is akin to, say, asking Coca Cola for its flavor combination.

The F1 steering wheel is innovative and scientific.

“The biggest thing is how complicated it is for the drivers,” Cadillac backup driver Zhou Guanyu, the only Chinese driver on the F1 circuit.

The F1 steering wheel is maybe a $50,000 piece of equipment on a car that costs maybe $10 miilion or more. The steering wheel features more than two dozen controls that surround a video display monitor that offers the driver a wealth of crucial information.

But let’s start with the basics of the steering wheel you’ll see at the Miami Grand Prix.

“The first thing you want to make sure is always the grip,” Guanyu said. “You want to make sure the grip is comfortable because there’s a lot of different widths you can have. You want to make sure also the grip material is grippy enough that your hands don’t slip.

“And then the second one I would say is the shift paddles because you use it a lot. We’ve got eight gears. We’re going up and down like a hundred times during a lap. And then we’re doing 55 laps.”

The steering wheel can monitor and adjust everything from how much brake pressure each tire receives to the differential, which is how much torque distribution goes to the tires.

“As the tires change characteristics, as the fuel comes down, the car balance changes, and they tune the handling of the car with the differential by locking the differential more or less to how they like it, and they can do that dependent on the corner speed,” said Alan Permane, team principal for Red Bull. “So they can have a change of setting for low speed, medium speed and high speed.”

The front of the steering wheel has a “radio” button that allows the driver to talk to his engineer, a pit lane speed limiter button that ensures the car is at the correct speed as it enters pit lane, and a rotary knob, or multi-function switch, that scrolls through an informational menu, among its numerous buttons and dials.

Operating something as simple as the pit lane speed limiter isn’t as easy as it sounds. The speed limit for the pit line entry line at most tracks is 80 kilometers an hour, or roughly 50 mph. At Monza, the track in Italy, drivers approach pit lane at 300 kilometers an hour, roughly 150 mph.

“They’ve got to hit that line at 80, otherwise you lose performance,” Permane said. “If you do it too early, you lose performance. If you do it too late, you could get a penalty because you’re going too fast. So that’s another real skill of the driver.”

The informational screen on the steering wheel can display tire temperature, engine mode, how much fuel remains, how many seconds you’re behind the car in front of you, and how many seconds you’re ahead of the car behind you, among other things.

“There’s so many things you can have, but there’s only a certain amount of space you can have to fit them in that page,” Guanyu said. “So that’s hard, because you have to select the priority you can have on them.”

Some of the buttons and dials on the front of the steering wheel are basic necessities, so they’re easily accessible.

“There are functions they need to get to quickly, like the radio, the pit limiter,” Permane said. “Things like that, that they use a lot, are on a single button. Things that we might use once a race, or maybe not even, are on this center switch (rotary button). They have to go through a menu and find it.

“Obviously, gear shift is one of the primary functions. And the clutch is another primary function. So they’re very big, prominent functions, controls for them.”

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Managing the steering wheel’s controls on a vibrating car while wearing gloves, driving 150 miles per hour, holding off rival drivers, and listening to an engineer’s instructions on the radio requires intense concentration and focus.

“It’s one of the things that separates the good from the great, honestly,” Permane said.

Consequently, being able to process information without losing tenths of a second is a valuable talent for a F1 driver. The functions and locations of the buttons and dials must be second nature to a driver so he doesn’t lose time making adjustments.

“People won’t understand it,” Guanyu said. “It’s like asking you, I don’t know, to turn your windshield wipers on, select the music to that specific song, then you have to be on the limit of braking. It’s like multiple tasking.”

On the back of the steering wheel are a series of “paddles,” which are basically elongated levers. These levers are essential for shifting gears.

“They control upshift and downshift, and then clutch as well,” Permane said. “That’s the function, that’s where steering wheel electronics really started, when we went from a manual shift gearbox to an electronic shift gearbox. And that’s when the steering wheel really started to come into its own.

“Before that, there was like one button for the radio. And then we put the gear shifting on there and the clutch. And then we put the display on there, and then we put the shift lights on there, and it’s just grown and grown and grown over the years.”

Even for Grand Prix drivers making the jump from the developmental F2 circuit up to F1, the steering wheel is a major difference.

“It looks similar, like the shape,” Guanyu said, “but the biggest difference is in Formula 1, you have probably 10 times or 20 times more buttons and functions that you can select or you can use during the race.”

Any one of those buttons and functions on the steering wheeln could be the difference between winning and losing on Sunday.