Racing Formula One is like being inside a fighter jet that’s zipping through impossibly winding roads at 200 MPH. There’s a lot going on. Piloting a powerful race car through the twisting roads requires a steering wheel that can control and handle all those changes on the fly. It also makes for a steering wheel that doesn’t look like a wheel at all.
This video annotates all the button pushing adjustments that are being made by the driver on the fly during a race, and it’s pretty wild. Even if you’re not aware of what’s exactly going on, it’s obvious that racing Formula One is very, very different from taking your parent’s car for a spin around the neighborhood. The steering wheel has all these colorful buttons, wild switches, and mysterious knobs. It’s almost like playing an arcade game. Like a really, really hard one.
Jalopnik highlighted some of the buttons in a F1 steering wheel before, and they include:
Buttons
BB- / BB+ – Brake-by-wire management (adjusting the brake balance down / up) OT – The ‘overtake’ button
N – Neutral
+10 / +1 – Multifunctional switches, located in an optimal position
Radio – Activated the driver to engineer radio
DRS – Operates the DRS flap
Limiter – Engages the pit lane limiter
Marker – Used to identify a point of interest in the data as indicated by the driver
PC/R – Confirms pit entry by sending an automated alert to the garage. This allows the crew to prepare for the arrival of a car, regardless of whether it’s been indicated on the radio that the driver is coming in
