Thief Steals $100,000 Formula 1 Steering Wheel
Someone has stolen a Formula 1 steering wheel from the Force India team at the Italian Grand Prix over the weekend. The piece of equipment is valued at a staggering $100,000 and police are now investigating the theft in the hopes of recovering the steering wheel.
Team officials noticed that the steering wheel was missing from their team garage on September 5 and quickly notified police that they believed it had been stolen at some point during the Saturday sessions. A team’s spokesperson said: “A steering wheel was stolen from the garage on Saturday night and the police are investigating.“
While steering wheels are generally not an expensive piece of equipment, the ones inside a Formula 1 car are highly sophisticated. It acts essentially as the control center for everything on the car, allowing drivers to change the air-fuel mix, engine mode, differentials, torque curve, brake bias or open the DRS flap on the back of the car at any moment while they are driving.
The devices can have as many as 45 different switches and toggles and the LCD display can show everything from what gear the car is in to engine temperature, lap times and fuel consumption. Altogether, it can display around 100 pages of different information, explaining why the hugely complicated steering wheels are so expensive.
