Grant:
Depending on steering angle, sometimes it's helpful to have the redundant lever.
Yeah, the lever stays where it is suppose to be, while the wheel mounted paddles moves around and escape when you need them.
On a track, where most steering angle are at most 90 degree to the left or right, both hands do stay on the wheel at 3 and 9 and close to the paddles, but the brain still needs to compute that the up shift paddle has moved to the left side but still under the right hand.
On the street, the most common shift with wheels cranked more than 90 is the 1-2 shift, around 2-3k rpm, with small to moderate throttle say in parking lots or something. Wheels mounted paddles means one has to look at the wheel just to see where 'up' is and then find the right paddle. Fixed paddles or levers means there is no need to hunt for the correct paddle.
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