Lewis’s team reinvents the wheel…

McLaren have overtaken Ferrari as the team to beat in F1. Much of the credit must go to the steallar driving of championship leader Lewis Hamilton, but he has been helped immensely by one McLaren innovation…

The Daily Telegraph’s Mark Hughes has the lowdown on McLaren’s remarkable steering wheel:

“McLaren’s steering wheel features four paddle levers rather than the usual two. The upper two are conventional gear-change paddles, one for upshifting, one for down. The lower two allow different engine torque settings to be chosen. Using two fingers at the same time allows the car always to have the most favourable engine torque setting for each gear, thus giving the driver a tool for limiting wheelspin out of slow corners without then suffering a reduction in power in the higher gears, where wheelspin is not an issue.

The rules stipulate that any change in torque settings cannot be triggered by the same driver input as a gear change. Having two separate levers gets around that rule, while still allowing the change of gear and torque setting to take place simultaneously. This is part of McLaren’s current performance superiority over Ferrari.”

A fascinating example of how a team is able to bend/interpret F1’s extremely inflexible rules. Expect other F1 teams to follow suit soon - after all, it makes sense to allow a driver to be able to choose his own engine maps.

In other McLaren news, the FIA have decided to check out Lewis Hamilton’s engine after his win in Germany. The FIA says:

“The engine of car number 22 is kept sealed in order to carry out further checks according to Article 5 of the  2008 FIA Formula One Technical Regulations. These checks will be done before the Hungarian GP.”

Just a routine check, but you never know what the FIA might find…