Formula One gets buttoned

With 26 switches on the steering wheel, drivers have to multi-task to survive

“I have my very first steering wheel, and it has a radio button,” said Barrichello, who has raced in 304 Grands Prix and now drives for the Williams team. “Now, you have 26 buttons.”

Those buttons control everything from engine revs to pit-lane speed limits to the fuel-air mixture that reduces fuel consumption to differential adjustment and the drink bottle. Drivers this year have never had more to do with their hands, feet and, above all, eyes. And they are not sure they like it.

Many drivers fear that when they are traveling at more than 300 kilometers, or 185 miles, an hour they will have so much to do with their hands -- and their brain -- that they will not be keeping their eyes on the road enough.

“'Multitasking’ will be the word of the year,” said Vitaly Petrov, a driver at the Renault team. “Playing with all the steering wheel dials at 300 kph will be, I guess, like answering to three BlackBerry messages while making fried eggs and doing your shoe laces, all at the same time. We’ll see how it goes.”

Barrichello said that he had no problem with how much he was required to do. “It’s how much I take my eyes off the track,” he said. “That’s the worry.”

Indeed, with new technical rules this year, most of the drivers now have more to think about than steering, changing gears, accelerating and braking and all the other buttons they have to press. But it is the two newest gadgets -- both designed to help them pass other cars -- that have tipped the scales of their dissatisfaction.

One is the energy saving device called Kinetic Energy Recovery Systems, or KERS, which collects energy from braking that may be released by the driver, during a period of 6.6 seconds per lap, in a sudden burst of energy that can reach up to about 80 horsepower. KERS usage is planned by the driver and his engineers and determined by numbers displayed on the steering wheel. So it requires mental awareness, agility, and looking away from the wheel.

“I had headaches the first time,” Barrichello said. “Because you’re trying to read what the steering wheel says. With KERS, you have to look at the numbers going down.”

Several teams used KERS in 2009, but it has now been combined with a second new device for passing: a moveable rear wing that is also meant to give a burst of energy.
The moveable rear wing changes position to reduce drag and allow the car to go faster. The rules permit the wing to be altered only along a certain sector of the track, and only if the driver has arrived to within one second of the car ahead of him at a point several hundred meters up the track from the passing point.

Sound complicated? Not according to Charlie Whiting, the race director, safety delegate and head of the technical department for the International Automobile Federation, the sport’s governing body. He thinks the rules for the moveable wing -- called the drag reduction system, or DRS -- are simple.

“Rules should be as simple as possible,” he said. “The use of DRS is allowed freely in qualifying and it is used only on one place on the circuit in the race. That to me is not too complex.”

But the FIA uses an electronic system to police correct usage of the moveable rear wing by drivers. When asked whether the FIA would look for another spot on the track where use of the moveable wing would be allowed, Whiting’s response showed just how complicated the situation really is.

“It is something we are certainly going to consider,” he said. “But it is quite a complex matter to get a detection point, notification point and an activation point for one straight. So we’ve got to make sure that all the things are working first.”

Jarno Trulli, a driver at Team Lotus, said that besides taking his eyes off the track, “The driver is probably busier, and what I think is he might be more stressed while driving the car, which means he has a higher chance of making a mistake.”

Teams work with their drivers to help them manage all the different functions comfortably. James Key, the technical director of the Sauber team, said his team’s engineers work with the drivers, Sergio Perez and Kamui Kobayashi, to meet their individual needs.

“There is obviously the driver comfort aspect of it,” Key said. “The layout of the wheel is very flexible, and they use the wheel in a different way and so they have buttons in different places accordingly.”

Some of the drivers activate the DRS with a pedal on the floor rather than with buttons on the steering wheel. But it still requires a focus on something extra.

Ultimately, driving has become a different kind of task than it once was. Adrian Sutil, a driver at Force India, said drivers who were better at working the buttons would have an advantage.

“Some will deal with it more precisely, some not so good,” he said. “We live in the future in Formula One; it’s not so bad. I actually quite like it. It’s a bit like PlayStation, 'Need for Speed’; you have a power boost, you have a KERS system and the rear wing. So it’s like a boost button and turbo button.”

New York Times News Service