Richard Mille

For this special occasion, the brand has chosen to design the world's lightest Split-second Tourbillon Chronograph: The RM50-03 McLaren F1.

Indeed the RM50-03 weighs less than 40 grams (including the new strap). FYI, the original RM035 in Aluminum and Magnesium alloy was around the same weight but with a much simpler movement (hour, minutes and seconds). This shows the huge performance, especially if we consider what is made available today in watchmaking.

To the Titanium and Carbon TPT materials the brand already masters, the company has added a new one to help reaching this goal. They call it Graph TPT (called from Graphene which you can see a picture of several layers on the picture below).

Layers of Graphene (forming Graphite):

The use of this new light, elastic and resistant material has been developped with the National Graphene Institute, established at the University of Manchester in 2015, where it was first isolated in 2004 by a professor of the School of Physics and Astronomy (labs shown below).

Graphene is 6 times lighter than steel and 200 times stronger. McLaren is integrating this material as well in their Forumla 1 car as having a lower density (thus lighter), higher resistance and better conductivity. Even in that field, they still succeed in finding better carbon-based materials. That's very exciting for people who like those cutting edge technologies and science in general.

 

From that moment, RM teams worked to apply this new tech to their TPT Carbon case, thus the Graphene TPT label, as well as on other elements like the straps. Indeed, the layers of Graphene are included in the TPT carbon layers during the assembling and weaving process. Hence, the additional lightness resulting from the lower density of the case, for a higher resistance. This requires also making improvements on the tools used to craft that hard material, with the right precision.

THE CASE

The case is 44.5 x 49.65 x 16.1 mm and, as you can see on the picture below, it uses the recent RM design for the bezel and caseback with the "notches" used in the RM035-01 -02, RM027-01 and new RM011-03. The hands as well as several elements (scales, counters...) are new in terms of style. The flange is also in Carbon. The crown is made from the design of F1 wheel central screw and the pushers have been also modified and receive this red line that I wasn't used before that way.

The pushers are inspired from the air intakes from McLaren F1 cars:

THE MOVEMENT

The movement uses Titanium as well as Carbon TPT for the baseplate to reach such a lightness while remaining resistant to shocks. This choice and the brands hability to work with such material since a long time now enables RM to push forward a 7-gram caliber weight. That's a huge performance for such a complicated watch (and even for less complicated ones).

The cage, via a bridge structure instead of a cage, is fixing the movement to the caseband and is made of the Graphene and Carbon TPT alloy as well.

The lightness of the movement's parts and their very high resistant (Titanium) and finishing helps the mechanism behaving very well in terms of chronometry and energy consumption. The hardness from their material and precise teeth profile allow to reach such a performance.

It has a cost but this is really something stunning in watchmaking standards imho. You can easily imagine that with such harder and lighter material, used not only in a case but also for some movement parts, the timekeeping and reliability are enhanced in a significant way. It allows better machining of the wheels with a higher precision and higher durability.

Added to this, the watch has a Tourbillon that has proven not to be a fragile gimmick but a tool for time accuracy and that has proven to be reliable on the wrist of several professional players in the past.

On the dial you can also see the 70-hour power reserve as well as the torque indicator. The function selector is also on the right side.

Concerning the strap, improvements have also been made as Graphene was also included in its design. It improves elasticity (I was surprised by that) and resistance to wear.

CONCLUSION

Well, when I saw the teaser I was thinking that using a RM050 wasn't that new (we always have high expectations with RM even though the RM050 is an incredible watch) and, as I wasn't that fan of the new "notches", I wasn't that excited. However, I must say now that I love it and that Richard Mille has made the best of the versions of the RM050 ever (hence, better than the previous Lotus for instance).

The full TPT Graphene case, with the new design (as it is black it is not as visible and brings a very nice touch to this sporty design) and the slight touches of colour make I think that the new RM050-03 McLaren F1 has the perfect balance and combination. Some colours at the right place and not too much, the new dial design and balance, the new pushers and of course the amazing caliber wich makes it certainly one of the best out there for a Split-second Tourbillon movement. This new piece is less than 40 grams with the new movement (7 grams). That's incredible and shows that there is a difference between adding a simple carbon case to a watch and bringing up such project on the entire watch, from scratch.

I'm convinced that many watchmaking evolutions in the future will be based on the capability to make smaller and smaller parts. Thus, they need to be made of strong material to be reliable and RM has a required expertise that I think noone else has today in that field.

The RM 50-03 McLaren F1 will be produced in a 75 pieces limited edition and will be available in Richard Mille boutiques only (price will be around 980,000 USD). Each watch will be accompanied by a 1:5 scale model of the McLaren-Honda racing car driven in 2017 by Double-World Champion Fernando Alonso and Stoffel Vandoorne.

Ken aka "KIH" has posted live pictures to enjoy here  www.watchprosite.com

More about the watch here if you wish (as well as a part concerning the new partnership with McLaren): http://richardmille.com/watch/rm-50-03/

So, how do you find that new RM?

Best, Mark