The new RM 50-03 Tourbillon Split Seconds
Chronograph Ultralight McLaren F1 is the first product of a recently inked
partnership between McLaren and high-end watchmaker Richard Mille. It was just
unveiled this week at the Salon International de la Haute Horlogerie, the
watchmaking equivalent of the Geneva Motor Show, and the same place where
Breitling revealed its new connected watch for Bentley. Only where the
Breitling has gone digital, the RM 50-03 is all about the craftsmanship and
construction.
For starters, it's a tourbillon – the crown jewel of
timekeeping complications that rotates the entire mechanism in its case at one
revolution per minute, thereby negating the effect of gravity on a watch's
accuracy, and obviating the need for a second hand in the process. It also
features a split-second flyback chronograph function for tracking lap times, a
70-hour power reserve, and a torque sensor to protect the movement from
over-winding. Yet the mechanism weighs only 7 grams and the entire watch just
40 – less than the weight of an egg or a tennis ball.
To make it that light, Richard Mille used not only
titanium and carbon fiber, but also graphene. Six times lighter (yet 200 times
stronger) than steel, the nano-material was discovered in 2004 at the
University of Manchester, earning two professors there the Nobel Prize in
physics. McLaren's Applied Technologies division has been working with the university's
National Graphene Institute on applications for the substance, out of which
Richard Mille constructed the three-part case, with the titanium and
carbon-fiber movement at its center.
Richard Mille's timepieces typically sell for US$ 100k
or more, and its tourbillons for half a million or so. The RM 50-03? It reportedly costs almost as much as McLaren's
P1 hybrid hypercar at a cool US$ 1 million excluding tax.
