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"Wood to leather. Leather to suede. Spokes to carbon-fiber spars. Buttons to LCDs. The term &amp;quot;steering wheel&amp;quot; was once a perfectly fitting description for the device used to change the direction of a motorized vehicle, but over time, and like so many other tools in modern society, it too has surrendered to advancing technology. In abstract terms, there are few components on a racing car that have changed more and become almost unrecognizable since the sport was in its infancy more than a decade ago.      The first steering levers gave way to wheels, and those early spheres were never designed with performance or ergonomics in mind. Wheel diameters changed with the available space in the cockpit of single-seaters and touring sedans, but the concept of designing a racing steering wheel to provide better grip and leverage would have to wait until the 1980s\u2014a time when wide tires and aerodynamic downforce made turning the steering wheel a serious challenge in some series.  &amp;quot;I started out with the same little steering wheels that everyone had at the time,&amp;quot; says Stefan Johansson, who drove for Ferrari and McLaren, among others, during a Formula One career that spanned 1983-1991. &amp;quot;There really wasn&amp;#039;t much thought put into them, I believe.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;The first real improvement actually was when steering wheels went from leather to suede, believe it or not. Yeah, it doesn&amp;#039;t sound like a lot but it was actually the difference in grip between the leather, the smooth leather and the suede was quite significant and actually gave me a lot more feel in the steering wheel. And that was in the early 80s.&amp;quot;  What was once a mundane appliance that did nothing other than turn the front wheels was about to become another area of performance to be unlocked. &amp;quot;Then it picked up from there,&amp;quot; Johansson continues. &amp;quot;Emerson Fittipaldi was probably one of the guys that first started it with that Personal wheel, the Italian brand, and they did that wheel with a slight thumb grip around the spokes at six and nine to give you more steering leverage. Before it was about gripping the wheel, but that gave you something to push against as you turned. It was quite smart.&amp;quot; F1 fans have grown accustomed to seeing cars with steering wheels that look more like a missile launch control panel than a device used to make directional changes, yet even during the mid-80s when Johansson was wielding 1000hp turbo Ferraris, electronics were mainly reserved for the engine. &amp;quot;Back then the only button you had on the steering wheel was the radio button; that was it!&amp;quot; Johansson says with a laugh. &amp;quot;And then slightly later on, the pit speed limit button came in but that was many, many years later, of course. There was a big revolution starting up in Formula One at that time, but they didn&amp;#039;t start to think about the things the drivers used in that way.&amp;quot; Ferrari took the first big step in integrating electronics into the steering wheel in 1989 when John Barnard&amp;#039;s semi-automatic transmission featured wheel-mounted paddle shifters. The finger-operated device has become commonplace today, but it was a ground-breaking advancement that soon led to more technology moving to the steering wheel. Shift lights, fuel metering displays and lap time information soon jumped from the bulkhead and surrounding cockpit real estate to the steering wheel, and with that extra step in mind, the proverbial floodgates opened as teams looked to create their own custom wheels to suit the engineering and performance needs each year.  &amp;quot;And then next thing that happened was they cut the steering wheel up, just like kind of a dragster with two grips on each side on removed the bottom, or flattened the top and made them out of lightweight materials,&amp;quot; says Johansson. &amp;quot;They did their own displays and everything else. It was something you used to order from a catalog before, but now teams made their own steering wheels and steering wheel electronics like they would make the chassis or other bespoke items.&amp;quot;  The Swede left F1 before technology overran steering wheels; but as he continued his career in the CART Indy car series and later at Le Mans with Porsche and Audi, all of those driver aids and more were staring him in the face\u2026and he wasn&amp;#039;t necessarily a fan. &amp;quot;Don&amp;#039;t forget the buttons are on the steering wheel essentially to make your life easier as a driver.&amp;quot; he opines. &amp;quot;That&amp;#039;s what it&amp;#039;s all about. It&amp;#039;s all to basically take away a lot of the work for the driver, effectively. The car is doing that work for you. They should just get rid of all this shit on the steering wheel. Get us back to the driver doing the job. You think it was easy to drive a 1500-horsepower Formula One car with virtually no downforce? I&amp;#039;m sure they can handle an 800-horespower car with 5,000 pounds of downforce or whatever they&amp;#039;ve got without having all that crap on the wheel.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;My friend (former F1 driver turned commentator) Martin Brundle just test drove the last Red Bull car, [Sebastian] Vettel&amp;#039;s car, and there&amp;#039;s now 50 different dials and adjusters in the cockpit of the car. 50! It&amp;#039;s crazy.&amp;quot; Even with his disdain for the steering wheel-mounted driving aids and data displays, Johansson, who currently competes in the American Le Mans Series LMPC prototype class, says the electronic tools soon become like any other control system to manipulate. &amp;quot;You learn it really fast, actually. It&amp;#039;s not that complicated.&amp;quot; he admits. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s like if you&amp;#039;re an airline pilot, it looks massively overwhelming when you look at the cockpit of an aircraft but once you break it down it&amp;#039;s not that complicated, really. You got plenty of time and you kind of work it out in your mind. Bottom line, it&amp;#039;s a great aid to the driver, of course, in so many different ways. And you keep dialing it and playing with that all the time.  &amp;quot;At Le Mans, if you&amp;#039;re on a triple stint on one set of tires you just use all the dials and stuff to get the car working at the maximum with car wear and track conditions and all the rest of it. But I think the biggest thing, though, if we look at all the stuff that&amp;#039;s on the steering wheel is obviously the paddle shift.&amp;quot; If the buttons and dials are here to stay, Johansson wouldn&amp;#039;t mind seeing paddle-shifting technology go away\u2014simply to allow human errors to play a greater role in the outcome of a race. &amp;quot;It is an evolution, and no, you can&amp;#039;t really turn the dial back, unfortunately, but a huge part of a driver&amp;#039;s skill set used to be the shifting and taking care of the gearbox,&amp;quot; he muses. &amp;quot;I remember I used to spend time in the factory at both McLaren and Ferrari, for example, with the mechanics having the gearbox apart, because I could understand in my mind what went on but I needed to see it officially to see where the shift forks went. &amp;quot;I used to file down the forks so you could go from second to third and just go, boom, and just push it forward without having to think about it. Because the lower gears in particular you had to shift so freaking quick with the turbos because, really, you couldn&amp;#039;t shift quick enough to get it up to the boost coming in. So I&amp;#039;ve spent an enormous amount of time just fiddling with that stuff all the time, getting it absolutely the way I wanted it. It was just part of the job. &amp;quot;And there&amp;#039;s really a lot of technique involved with both the downshift and the upshift. Same thing with the downshift, just being able to get the RPM absolutely bang on because if you didn&amp;#039;t, then the back started to wiggle a bit if you had too much engine braking. I mean, now all you have to do as a driver is really just concentrate on exactly your braking point and then you just hammer the lever and the electronics engage when it&amp;#039;s time to engage.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Not a lot to think about anymore from that point of view. But before that was an enormous piece of the arsenal in the driver&amp;#039;s skill set to be able to do that right. Instead of it being about rhythm and using your hands and feet better than the next guy, now you just flip the levers with your fingers and the electronics handle the rest.&amp;quot;  As steering wheels went from analog to digital in F1, Johansson reckons the drivers who use those wheels have also evolved to suit the available technology. In case you were wondering, he doesn&amp;#039;t view that as a compliment. &amp;quot;A big, big part of what makes up a great racing driver is the bravery,&amp;quot; he explains. &amp;quot;And sadly, you don&amp;#039;t need to be very brave anymore. It&amp;#039;s a whole different game now. I mean, still, it takes a pretty special person to be really good, but it&amp;#039;s a different skill set now. Your hands never leave the wheel, the engine revs are made perfect by the electronics, and the shifts are the same way.      &amp;quot;You take a guy like Fernando Alonso. He&amp;#039;d be a champion in my era or any other era. So all the shit on the steering wheel today or without it, it isn&amp;#039;t going to make a difference. But what I don&amp;#039;t care for is the young kid who shows up to test alongside a guy like Alonso and is almost matching his times in one day. There&amp;#039;s no way that should happen. Everything on the wheel helps the great ones perform even greater, but the bad side is that it also makes the good look like they&amp;#039;re great. &amp;quot;Wouldn&amp;#039;t it be great to get rid of it all and see how everyone stacks up on their own merit? You&amp;#039;d really find out who has the biggest balls, wouldn&amp;#039;t you\u2026&amp;quot; "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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