Carbon Footprints

I explain that like Murray, Richard Mille was pioneering in the use of carbon fibre, becoming the first person to use the material in high watchmaking. And although it has now become commonplace to use carbon fibre for watch cases, Mille actually started by using it for the base plate – the chassis onto which all parts of the movement are attached. He did it because he wanted to make his watches as light as possible. The titanium RM 006, which was made for F1 driver Felipe Massa, featured a base plate in carbon sourced from the same supplier as the Airbus brakes.

Everyone is paralysed. Then suddenly a hand swoops in and picks the watch up and shows it to us. We cringe as we examine every visible surface of the watch. Amazingly there isn’t even the faintest hint of a scratch. While the tourbillon and rattrapante appear to function flawlessly. Tim Malachard, head of communications at Richard Mille, laughs: “Don’t worry, Richard used to take his own watch off and throw it to the ground just like that to demonstrate how shock-resistant it is.” And that’s the main reason he chose carbon fibre for his base plate, because it’s so damnably resistant to abusive forces. So much so that when Felipe Masa suffered a high-speed, massive-G-force crash while wearing his RM 006, the watch was found to have lost nary a second in precision.

Big Hitters

It is precisely his fascination with creating the most shock-resistant watches that has led Mille to create watches for Rafael Nadal, one of tennis’s hardest hitters, and Bubba Watson, the man with the longest drive in golf. He has taken lightness to an extreme with the 40g RM 50-03 which has skeletal carbon bridges holding the movement parts milled directly into the carbon fibre case band of the watch so they form one shock-resistant monobloc unit.

Blank Canvas

Mille nods in agreement when he hears this and states, “I started from a blank canvas. I wanted to create the ultimate timepiece in terms of comfort, ergonomics, shock resistance and lightness. And at each instance I reached a juncture where I could compromise or I could forge ahead into unchartered territory by innovating something new. At each of these moments I pushed forward.” I remind Mille that he was the first to use I-beam construction for his skeletonised movements to optimise torsional rigidity; the first to use aluminum lithium; the first to use carbon; the first to use de-classified materials intended for satellites such as AluSic, a mixture of aluminum and silicon that had to be spun in a centrifuge until they merged at a molecular level; the first to make a watch entirely from sapphire crystal; and the first to encourage athletes like Nadal to attempt to destroy his watches by playing with them. Mille chuckles and says: “Yes, if I were my own financial controller I would have tried to fire myself several times over.”

Night Vision

The now iconic super tonneau shape came to Richard one night. “I was in a hotel room on a business trip but I couldn’t sleep,” he recalls. “I went to the toilet and took a bar of soap and began to carve it and shape it into a form that I could see in my mind. Later I would build a paper model of this shape and when I put it on my wrist I knew this would be the foundation of my brand. And there is something jaw-droppingly attractive about a Richard Mille watch.”

During the McLaren F1 25th anniversary drive through Bordeaux, a guest who works in the pharmaceutical business in Luxembourg said: “The moment I set eyes on a Richard Mille I knew I had to have it. There was something primal and electrifying about the design and look of the watch. Then when I put it on and began to learn about all the innovations inspired by motor racing I knew I had found my brand. It’s the same thing with my McLaren P1,” he says, gesturing to his massive-tailed 217mph alien spacecraft of a car.

Fierce Spirits

This is brought up over and over again at impromptu conversations with the assembled guests, the owners of the majority of the McLaren F1s in existence, that particular objects in the world – like these cars and Richard Mille watches – are endowed with a certain anima, a spiritual ferocity and unique perspective imparted by their creators. The point is that there are often mergers and mash-ups in the luxury watch world that are opportunistic and ill-fitting. This is not one of them. Indeed the technical, intellectual and aesthetic parallels between Richard Mille and McLaren are so symbiotic that one could be the car manufacturing division of the other, or vice versa.

The similarities in Gordon Murray’s approach to creating the F1 and Richard Mille’s creation of his first RM 001 are seemingly endless. One of them relates to the cost of the car and the watch. At the time of its launch the McLaren F1 was the most expensive sports car ever created. And all of that cost was related to Murray’s decision to use technology that had never before been put into a civilian car. The F1 also has tiny electric Kevlar fans that increase downforce – inspired by Murray’s pioneering work in the infamous Brabham Formula 1 “fan car” from 1978. Parts that were bolted to the carbon tub to round off the chassis were made from aluminum and magnesium. The wheels travel back rather than up and down when they hit a bump, allowing for exceptional control and a less jarring ride.