This is Alain Prost’s Ferrari 641 Formula 1 steering wheel from 1990, it was his first season at Ferrari after the reigning World Champion was lured away from McLaren to partner Nigel Mansell – creating one of the greatest driver line-ups of the period.
Prost would take 5 victories during the 1990 season with Mansell taking an additional win, the drivers would pilot the car to 14 podium positions in total, with 3 pole positions, and 5 fastest laps.
The relative lack of buttons, switches, and screens is a stark contrast to modern Formula 1 steering wheels. This wheel has just one button and one stitch, with a single cable to plug it in.
The steering wheel was kept as a memento by Ferrari F1 engineer Nigel Stepney after his exit from the Ferrari team, and it comes with a certificate explaining its history and provenance.
RM Sotheby’s are estimating that it’ll sell for between $2,600 and $3,900 USD, though obviously not cheap it’s pretty reasonable for a piece of Formula 1 history this significant. Sadly there’s currently no word on where you’ll be able to source a boss kit from to fit it to your 1998 Honda Civic.
Images: Jack Margerison ©2018 Courtesy of RM Sotheby’s
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Silodrome was founded by Ben back in 2010, in the years since the site has grown to become a world leader in the alternative and vintage motoring sector, with well over a million monthly readers from around the world and many hundreds of thousands of followers on social media.