The science of steering – uncovering the tech of the Formula E race wheel

Every racing category nowadays has a hugely complex steering wheel with masses of controls and electronics to aid the driver.

Formula E is no exception, despite the underlying simplicity of the electric powertrain.

Indeed, the driver’s use of all of the controls available on the steering wheel throughout the lap, means the Formula E driver may have a higher demand on the steering controls than any other to get the fastest laps and most efficient race.

XAP Steering wheels in FE

The FE steering wheel has gone through several iterations since season1 way back in 2014.

The current steering wheel introduced in season10 (2023) is a completely different design to those used previously.

It’s still made by French company XAP and is quite similar to the F2 wheel.

Its construction is completely different, being modular, based around a ‘forged’ carbon fibre centre with bolt on sections for the dash and grips.

Even the design of this relatively recent design has been updated.

Drivers had injured their hands and wrists in accidents, caused by the steering wheel kicking back in an accident.

So, the bottom section of the steering wheel is now a fully rounded shape, as opposed to having a protruding hand grip.

Now, in theory, the wheel will not catch the driver’s hand or wrist should it spin around in a crash.

Layout

The wheel has 12 buttons, 4 rotary’s and 6 paddles. It may be surprising that the FE wheel has so many paddles as there is no clutch and no gears.

Instead the paddles are used constantly through the lap to adjust cars handling

Starting with the front, the dash in the centre has a number of graphic display pages, that the teams can customise to suit the driver’s needs.

Different displays for a fast lap and through the race with more energy management information, as well as a host of maintenance pages.

The function of each button, rotary and paddle can be configured by the team to suit their own needs and equally customisable for each driver.

Exactly what each button and rotary does cannot be described in detail, as the teams keep it secret. Obvious functions for the buttons would be:

pit lane speed limiter
radio
full course yellow
attack mode
reverse gear mode

Some buttons will be assigned handling functions and will be used at nearly every corner.

The Rotary buttons will be a mix of power unit and braking settings, as well as admin modes for the systems and sensors on the car.

Curiously the season 10 wheel design moves away from rotaries in the hand grips near the driver’s thumbs. Instead all four rotaries’ on mounted on the lower face of the steering wheel.

There is then the unique feature of this steering wheel, which is the large central rotary/display.

Again its function will vary by team and driver, but usually has settings for specific corners, with the inner display lighting up to highlight which mode has been selected.

Cockpit and steering wheel detail on the Lola Yamaha ABT Formula E Team during Formula E Women’s Pre-Season Testing at Ricardo Tormo Circuit on October 31, 2025 in Valencia, Spain. (Photo by Alex Bierens de Haan/LAT Images)

There’s six paddles behind the steering wheel.

These will again be confidential to each team but follow similar principles; often two paddles will be assigned to regenerative braking, changing how much regen the driver wants into different corners.

Then, two paddles will be assigned what might be described as engine-braking, as the driver lifts and coasts there can be a different degree of braking particularly from the rear wheels and this will affect how the car rotates into corners.

The upper paddles are often assigned to driver specific modes, such as overtake.

Constant adjustment

During the course of a lap, the driver will be constantly operating buttons with their thumbs and clicking on the paddles to get the ideal set up to enter and exit each corner.

There are two aims to this driving method.

Firstly, is getting the car to handle, the only means the driver has to adjust the handling is via braking.

By default, when a Formula E car goes off throttle, it will start to regenerate a little bit of energy from both the front and rear axles, called lift and coast.

Then, as the driver applies the brake pedal, more braking torque will be applied to both the front and rear axles.

Bear in mind, the majority if not all of the braking of a Formula E car is done by regenerative braking and almost none from the front discs and none whatsoever, except in an emergency, from the rear discs.

Altering the amount and the progression of breaking torque between the front and rear axles will alter how the car rotates into a corner.

Secondly, energy management is crucial. While in qualifying the driver has less to concern themselves with energy.

But in the race it is absolutely crucial to manage the energy harvested and deployed from the battery.

A driver will have an energy target per lap, agreed with their race engineer for different parts of the race.

This target will appear on the dash, as well as a plus/minus delta to that. It’s then down to the driver to decide how much to lift and coast, or to regen/brake for each corner on every lap.

They will have to balance the requirement to manage energy, with how much to compromise to get the car’s handling to maintain the best race time.

Further complicating that, is the need to defend or attack when racing other drivers.

This workload is probably greater than any other motorsport.

Most race car wheels demand the driver changes gear and makes occasional differential or brake bias changes, radio and pit lane limiters.

In Formula E this is constant, as well as all the other tasks a race driver carries out on the steering wheel through a race such as different power unit strategy settings.