Video: Felipe Massa's new "simplified" steering wheel explained

Pretty sound. considering the old wheels. For the life of me I don't know how BMW's drivers ever understood theirs.

_J

 

Ermm and thats a simple one show me a complicated one then..

 

KERS made 'em much worse.....

Pretty interesting, but man I wish they'd put the damn thing down and shot from a tripod - Almost made me sick all that bouncing around!

The "over-rev" button suggests they're not running at the max permissible limit (19k?) for much of the time (?) And he has a manettino to turn the wick down even more ("Rev").

Thanks for sharing, cheers,
Ian

 

Yes indeed, respect to the drivers tweaking and driving at the same time..

 

As I was watching the clip, in My mind I couldn't help hearing the Italian commentary translated as:



"This is Felipe's new steering wheel which we have simplified.

Basically almost all of these switches and dials have been disconnected as they just seemed to confuse him and during the races we noticed that he was making the car worse with every adjustment.

We haven't told him that they no longer function, so he can still play with them all, thinking they are altering the car, but it's all in his head!.

The added benefit is that the wheel is now even cheaper to manufacture as there are now very few parts inside it.

Fernando's wheel is similar in design but with his, all of the dials and switches are still connected as he seems to go faster when he plays with the controls on the wheel."



(To all the Massa fans, it was just a bit of fun, that's all! )

 

My thoughts exactly, my heads spinning from the camera and the mechanic moving around.
Why is it that the Ferrari road cars don't have the paddles move with the steering wheel?

 

In an F1 car, your hands are always on the steering wheel in a turn, but in a road car you have to take your hands off the wheel in order to take a turn. If they moved with the wheel, someone could get confused and pull the wrong paddle. It's basically down to the steering ratio.

 

I would have thought a Ferrari road car would have a pretty quick steering ratio so you wouldn't have to remove your hands very often ...

Still rather have a gear lever myself.
Pete

 

you would think, but sadly, no. anything pre 360 is very slow IMO. 550s not bad. looks like 458 will be excellent.

 

What i found interesting were the silver tabs that were described as being a sort of front and rear differential adjustment .

Perhaps it can be locked on straights and spooled in hairpins?? Brilliant!

 

Brilliant!!