Girard Perregaux

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A Review of the GP Laureato BMW Oracle Chronograph

Girard Perregaux sponsored the BMW Oracle sailing team starting in 2005 and created some great sporty divers and chronographs during their time with the team. Many of these watches highlighted high tech case and dial materials that reflected the materials used in the sail racing series.
While I owned a Seahawk diver with a carbon dial for a while, it has been my Laureato Chrono that has stayed in my collection for many years. This watch has such a long list of incredible details that I don’t believe are matched. But, like any watch, there are some details I may have specified differently.
The good: The case body, case back, and visible when worn portions of the clasp are DLC coated titanium. DLC (Diamond Like Carbon) is a very hard but thin and translucent coating which results in a dark gray and very scratch resistant material. In my experience, scratches can be erased with a pencil eraser or cape cod cloth. The bezel is what appears to be black ceramic with the octagonal raised section coated with matte black rubber. The pushers and crown are similarly coated. The inner leaves of the double folding deployant clasp are brushed titanium, and the band is rubber with deep channels on the inside to allow moisture to easily flow or evaporate away. The clasp is a secure design with twin pusher release. The movement is the CP033C0 which is modular with in-house base with what I believe is an in-house chrono module. The automatic base has a 46 hour power reserve, and the chronograph module features both sweeping seconds and minutes counters and a fly back function. The chronograph pushers are very crisp in feel with a fine pleasant “ting” with each manipulation. This chronograph is a suitable sail racing companion with its 100m water resistance rating and regatta style blue and red sectors. The dial is playful with cartoonish applied bronze tone Arabic indices with copious and powerful superluminova inlays. All of the hands, with the odd exception of the sweeping chronograph sweeping minute hand, also feature glowing inlays. The subdial tracks and perimeter minute track are applied to the base dial which is a marbled texture anthracite colored material with printed branding.
So the dial details lead into my only gripes. The dial is a feast of colors, textures, and surfaces that give a toyish overall impression. Legibility has come second to fun it seems. I very often wear this watch while running, and trying to find the minute hand while red misted with exhaustion and the watch bouncing around on my swinging arm, the thin white hand with hollow yellow triangle tip can be a challenge. My other gripe has to do with gear backlash. When setting the time, it usually takes several tries to get the minutes to align with a mark when the seconds reach 12. Also, while the fly back function is a great feature and extremely rare with a sweeping minute chronograph (are there any others?) the seconds hand takes a tick or two to resume its march if it flys back around the 9 side of the dial.
So overall, the watch is a materials smorgasbord that is very comfortable and perfectly suited for a run, day on the boat, beach, or pool. It is not the watch I would grab to impress other watch nerds at a GTG, but perhaps it should be. This watch has serious ruggedness baked in with impressive horological features, but the icing jokes, “It’s time for fun!”

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