A Look at the Formula 1 Steering Wheel | Hacker News Reader

A Look at the Formula 1 Steering Wheel

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112 pointsdmmalam60 comments

A Bit Off Topic: If anyone has interest in how it was before smart steering wheels, here is a vid clip of the master Ayrton Senna at Monaco in real-time as it happened.

http://youtu.be/rh6bwZ4ooTI

It is deemed the best in car F1 vid of all times by fans. It is raw and not sped up.

That's unreal. I remember watching the Senna documentary and at the end of one of the races they had to pry him out of his car, starting with his fingers. His teammates were giving him pats on the back and he just screamed out not to touch him.

Insane.

Forearm and leg pump battling lateral G forces, current day Fernando Alonso/Ferrari describes this during his race season if you following him.

During the Senna video above, he takes his hand off the steering wheel with 2+ lateral G’s to shift which is insane also. Today’s drivers paddle shift with both hands on the wheel.

And back in Senna's day relatively little attention was paid to the physical performance of the driver — nowadays all the drivers spend far, far more time on their fitness.

That was most probably in Brazil where in treacherous wet conditions his gear-box got jammed at 6th gear. And he drove his car in 6th gear for several laps towards the end.

Yes those were the details I was missing, thank you.

BTW, even if you're not an F1 fan (I wasn't), check out the Senna documentary, a great movie: http://www.sennamovie.com/

That video never gets old. Taking your hand off the wheel to manual shift one of the most powerful f1 cars ever made around Monaco... That f1 era was quite insane.

Monaco is scary.

Its an interesting UI case. Everything happens so fast, there is no time for modality so every function needs to be directly accessible at the top layer. You end up with a steering-wheel full of single purpose buttons and knobs.

It kind of feels like the old days when you'd get "mission control syndrome" because the controls were tied to actual relays that actuated functions so they could only do one thing. In this case, its entirely justified.

I imagine that the drivers can't look at the wheel when they are using it, so everything has to be distinguishable by touch.

This happened only the other day to Maldonado: http://www1.skysports.com/f1/news/24231/9271393/pastor-maldo...

>Maldonado confirmed he had been looking down at the steering wheel at the time and simply took a wrong turn: "I was on the steering wheel. Too much to do in the out laps. After out laps it's okay."

It's difficult to draw conclusions using Maldonado, since he's a pay driver with a well-established reputation for incompetence.

Lotus are getting what they deserve for hiring him for his money over more skilled drivers who could have helped move the team forward.

While I'm not his biggest fan, I don't think you can fairly call him incompetent. Anybody with a win and a pole position next to their name can't be considered incompetent.

If you say so. In today's Spanish grand prix he wrote off his car during qualifying, and then smashed into Gutierrez during the race, receiving more penalties, and adding to his already extensive record of crashing.

There are some modal controls for secondary functions, like the aptly-named MFRS (multi-function rotary switch) but by and large they are single purpose as you pointed out. In terms of UI takeaways, I noticed that they did a pretty good job of laying out functionally-opposite buttons symmetrically on each side of the wheel, so your if your right thumb hits param+ then your left thumb will hit param-, to mistake-proof operations and emphasize muscle memory while reducing cognitive load. Also the nominal positions of the rotary switches are consistently colored white, for similar reasons.

Video of the 2014 Ferrari Steering Wheel: http://www.formula1.com/news/technical/2014/0/1180.html

This just breaks my brain. I get confused if I accidentally hit the turn signal while pulling out of a parking spot, and end up turning on the wipers or something. How they manage all of that at such high speeds with such consistency is truly a marvel.

One thing that is curious to me is that the display for speed takes a significant portion of the screen space. I would imagine that knowing speed would be incidental information for a race car driver, given that there are no speed limits. I suppose that they might have marks to hit for straightaways or something to limit wear on the engine - but in those cases a simple LED or flash would be more effective for that.

I'd argue that it's a feedback loop - namely, that the driver wants to know speed because that way he can drive to optimise it around the track. He knows what speeds he needs to be at, at specific points on the track, to optimally corner, etc.

Not to mention that the precise limits of what speed can be achieved where will change as track temperature and conditions change. By giving that to the driver, they can use their intuition to tune their optimal lap performance.

When doing a time trial on a road circuit, corner exit speed is a really good gauge at how well you've performed in a corner. Probably more crucial when you're by yourself, learning a track, or doing qualifying though. When between other cars you've got other constraints.

You would still want a gaugse to watch it approach the limits, and I would guess that when they are driving they hardly take their hands off the wheel, so you just need space where the thumbs can reach.

Surprisingly enough, before the 2014 season with brake-by-wire, drivers would have to adjust the brake bias (forward vs rear) by moving a little lever down next to their knees. They'd be taking their hands off the wheel all the time.

I agree. Lap and sector times, RPM, ERS status, and current gear all seem more useful and are all featured more heavily on the Ferrari screen mentioned elsewhere in this thread, sample screens from McLaren Electronics, and the older LED displays.

The reason that -- at least on the Sauber -- the speed is displayed so large is that it's the number that's changing the most rapidly. It isn't a primary piece of information, but when the car is accelerating away from a corner, the driver needs to be able to discern acceleration by way of more than just the seat of his or her pants. With the immense amount of torque available this year, being able to optimize that acceleration out of a corner is absolutely paramount.

The "marks to hit for straightaways or (...)" are visual indicators on the sides of the track, showing the distance to the corner. Part of what makes these drivers the best in the world are that they're able to hit -- mostly -- the exact same braking spot coming from 300kph down to 60kph lap after lap after lap, without a computer telling them when to brake.

Coincidentally, that row of LEDs on the top of the wheel is supposed to tell drivers when to shift, but teams found out a long time ago that the visual indicator wasn't being processed fast enough by the drivers' brains, so now drivers get a little beep in their ear when they're supposed to up/downshift.

Very cool. Thanks for the in depth answer.

And compare that to, say, a WRC car [0], where the most visible piece of information is the current gear.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gc9jA5hg6vc

> Coincidentally, that row of LEDs on the top of the wheel is supposed to tell drivers when to shift, but teams found out a long time ago that the visual indicator wasn't being processed fast enough by the drivers' brains, so now drivers get a little beep in their ear when they're supposed to up/downshift.

I'd wondered where those went, it's amazing what they optimize to buy milliseconds per lap.

The display is used for a lot of things, not just for speed. For example during saturday qualifying drivers usually have the time difference of their laps to the leader on the display, and it gets constantly updated.

It's quite interesting to watch cockpit cams and see the effect any little mistake or different line has on the lap time. You can also often see differences in brake balances between drivers and more on them during the race, can be really interesting if you pay attention to that.

Keeping speed avail allows one to sanity check other variables. So if you are coming in hot, speed tells you. It also helps you guage feel--like tires or traction variances over the track--by eliminating another degree of freedom.

Yes, there are speed limits in the pit lane (80 kmph IIRC).

There is even a type of penalty, the "drive-through" consisting on driving the whole pit lane without exceeding the speed limit.

There is a special button to limit the speed specifically for the pits.

AIUI, you must slow down to the pitlane speed limit before it takes effect.

When braking you need to optimize the end speed, too fast and your car slides, too slow and you lose time.

It's easier to memorize every cornering speed for every corner in the circuit than trying to 'feel' it every time.

i'm surprised f1 topics don't come up on HN more often. it's an incredible engineering field and has driven the development and adaptation of basically every consumer automobile safety and performance feature for decades.

I'm a little skeptical that a human can do a better job on these than a computer. I guess the computer doesn't know the drivers intent, so he needs to control things that will change after his next action (speed up/down, etc).

But I wonder if instead of controlling the parameters directly, instead you switch to an intent based system where you tell the computer what you are going to do.

Makes me ponder about computerized auto racing - same kind of car, track, and rules - just with a computer at the wheel. Then even on a human race the car pretends it was driving and adjusts things based on what it would do with the assumption the human would do the same (or close enough).

It really isn't about which can do a better job, robots or people. It's about which is more fun to watch. Computers racing computers is about as exciting as a round of Mario Kart with no human players.

FIA regulates the race with this exact thing in mind.

Computers racing computers is pretty exciting to some people.

http://arewefastyet.com/

http://speed.pypy.org/

http://benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org/

Yes, of course there is a niche. But F1 targets a very broad audience.

Those don't generate profits that allow a budget, for example, of $470 million dollars (US), which was Ferrari's budget in 2013.

No one, for any reasonable value of "no one", wants to watch computer racing. I'll leave it to others to quibble about the outliers.

(I'm not up to date on the 2014 season, so a more avid fan might show me up) While the driver may be making adjustments to road-condition or in response to immediate problems detected in the car, the biggest reason he is going to have to fiddle with one of those knobs is strategy.

Shift the brake balance and you shift the tire wear, which might get you more time in certain corners in traffic, or might preserve a set of tires for an extra lap. The DRS is almost a no-brainer, but the KERS can require some finesse. Hit it into the turn, on the follow through, coming out of the straight? That depends on who you're up against, how his car performs compared to yours, and how you're looking on fuel & tires.

Also, FIA banned traction and launch control a few years ago, specifically because they were worried the computer was doing too much driving. Actually, they were worried that the top teams (Ferrari, Mercedes, etc) would be able to build a traction control so sophisticated that the lesser-funded teams would not be competitive.

McLaren's traction control is unreal, though it doesn't feel great when it kicks in. The rotation you get when it grabs one corner with the brakes is kinda crazy, though. The MP4-12c's namesake, the MP4-12 had TWO brake pedals, which let the driver apply braking to just one rear wheel, was eventually banned.

KERS is all decided by the computer now!

As the sibling said, it's about pushing more responsibility back on the driver. You're absolutely right that a computer would do a better job for many of the functions.

One example is that they removed traction control from the cars a few seasons ago. Why? Because it made it easier for the drivers to drive optimally, but in doing so reduced the entertainment and variability of how the race unfolds. By removing it, it gives more chances for the driver to screw up and for the race to change. It's more exciting for the spectator.

It was broadly held by many fans some years ago that F1 was becoming too robotic and taking all the fun and variety out of it. The race depended more on the tech that the team could jam in to the car, and the driver was really just a glorified program to run the basic functions. By making driver skill a bigger slice of the 'what it takes to win' pie, it made it more exciting to follow as a fan.

Driverless F1 cars in a race... now that would be an interesting competition

To us.

I'm not convinced that it would be everyone, the "problem" with F1 over the last few years is that the personality and style of the drivers has taken a backseat to the technology.

I find the technology fascinating but many of the races boring.

You'd be more interested in the outcome and post-mortem than watching it unfold live, aside from the initial novelty.

F1 races already seem to have hardly any passes -- I have to imagine putting computers at the helm will just bring that total down to zero.

Welcome to NASCAR, friends!

They can't, computers do better. But excess use of computers has been against the rules in F1 for a while, in a variety of ways. A consequence of this is that what actually happens during a race is that the race team will read all the sensor readouts from the vehicle then they figure out what change needs to be made. But they can't just press a button and make the change remotely, that's against the rules, so instead they radio the driver and he makes the change. Whether this is actually a better way to go is a bit of an open question.

When you've travelled half a kilometer in the time it takes the engineer to tell you what to do, it means his instructions must be at a much higher level and relatively glacial response time than the driving instincts that make a great driver.

On the other hand, if remote changes were allowed, the team could adjust brake balance (or mechanical ERS harvesting and consequent friction) based on the corner entry speed, braking point, and the driver's foot pressure (i.e. whether he's perfect or not), at the speed of telemetry.

Folks are working on it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YxHcJTs2Sxk

Interesting that there is a supply chain for these parts, i.e. McLaren sell instrumentation goodies to their rivals. Volume levels cannot be that high, even if the margins are good. Why don't they keep things to themselves?

With the steering wheel moving it looks like digital rather than an analogue style gauge is how information gets best presented as far as speed is concerned.

Note that when Lewis Hamilton moved to Mercedes he got the engineers to strip back the 30+ knobs and buttons to be something more like what you might find on a consumer steering wheel for an F1 game. Hence I don't think the featured steering wheel is optimal or likely to be the best.

Some of it has to do with controlling costs. The FIA contract out some of the more common technology (which is so tightly controlled that there's no room for real innovation) so that teams can spend their budgets on increasing performance.

One example is that McLaren provide a common ECU to all teams[0]

[0]http://www.mclarenelectronics.com/Systems/CaseStudy/Formula%...

>Note that when Lewis Hamilton moved to Mercedes he got the engineers to strip back the 30+ knobs and buttons to be something more like what you might find on a consumer steering wheel for an F1 game.

Apparently he removed 4 knobs, from 31 to 27, so not very significant. He also has a supposedly useless red X button by his left thumb. My theory is that it's the "x-factor" button that he pushes when he's really trying. Sort of like when Valentino Rossi starts hanging his leg out in the corners when he's trying to go really fast, apparently useless for balance under breaking but probably helps mentally.

http://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/formula-1/lewis-hamilton-makes...

The "X button" could be a button to help him react properly. I know he is a world class driver, but when something unforeseen happens, all people react instinctively, rather than consciously. A way to combat this is to train a movement, like slamming the foot in the footrest, or pressing a button. It buys you that fraction of a second to assess the situation and act consciously, rather than just react.

It's considered part of the standardized ECU, provided by Microsoft, subcontracted to McLaren Electronic Systems.

Different drivers have different preferences — at the top of the grid, it's not that unusual (at least historically, I don't know about this year off-hand) for the two drivers to have different wheels.

Yes - I remember that Jacque Villeneuve had a special steering wheel with which he could shift gears with one hand.

Curiously, modern driver's cars are removing increasingly more from the steering wheel. It can be a distraction on the track.

And instead put touch-screen media centres, which aren't distracting at all...

At least on the McLaren you can turn it off very easily.

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