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Business Times
3 days ago
- Automotive
- Business Times
Richard Mille's RM 43-01 is a fusion of performance with purpose
[SINGAPORE] Picture this: You're admiring a Ferrari engine bay, marvelling at the intricate dance of precision-engineered components working in perfect harmony. Now imagine that same engineering philosophy shrunk down to fit on your wrist. That's exactly what happens when Richard Mille and Ferrari join forces. Their latest collaboration, the RM 43-01 Tourbillon Split-Seconds Chronograph Ferrari, isn't just a timepiece – it's a mechanical dialogue between two houses defined by their obsession with performance, precision and bold design. The watch is the second chapter in a partnership that was established in 2021, and which resulted in the RM UP-01 Ultraflat Ferrari – a watch just 1.75 mm thick – being unveiled the following year. The 'gentleman driver' version of the RM 43-01 Tourbillon Split-Seconds Chronograph Ferrari in microblasted and polished Grade 5 titanium. PHOTO: RICHARD MILLE The new watch will be available in two distinct personalities, as Richard Mille's casing technical director, Julien Boillat, puts it: there is the 'gentleman driver' version in microblasted and polished Grade 5 titanium with a Carbon TPT (a lightweight and durable thin-ply composite used exclusively for Richard Mille) caseband, as well as the 'high-octane' Carbon TPT variant for those who prefer their luxury with more attitude. Both are limited to 75 pieces each. What makes this collaboration fascinating isn't just the prestige factor. Ferrari's Centro Stile design team didn't just slap their logo on an existing watch. Instead, they worked alongside Richard Mille's engineers for two years, influencing everything from the angular crown, sculpted pushers and strap, which echoes the patterning of the Purosangue's interior. Even the hands take their cues from Ferrari's design language. Every curve, surface and treatment serves a dual purpose – stylistic and functional. The rear of the calibre reveals a titanium plate engraved with the Prancing Horse emblem, its form echoing the design of the 499P's rear wing. A NEWSLETTER FOR YOU Friday, 2 pm Lifestyle Our picks of the latest dining, travel and leisure options to treat yourself. Sign Up Sign Up The 'high octane' Carbon TPT version of the RM 43-01 Tourbillon Split-Seconds Chronograph Ferrari. PHOTO: RICHARD MILLE The dial, open-worked and three-dimensional, offers a clear view of the split-seconds chronograph's mechanical choreography and the off-centre tourbillon escapement. An innovative active seconds display – its rotating blades read off a 12-second scale – adds an element of kinetic energy to the dial. The torque and function indicators echo a high-performance instrument cluster; much like a Ferrari dashboard, the layout is always technical but yet highly legible. Pushers are dynamic, case flanks are detailed with angular ridges, and golden socket-head screws contrast with blackened bridgework – a visual reference to the tension and complexity of engine blocks and crankcases. The calibre houses a tourbillon and a split-seconds chronograph, all supported by a skeletonised titanium baseplate with bridges in both titanium and Carbon TPT. PHOTO: RICHARD MILLE Technically, the RM 43-01 is among the most complex watches the maison has ever produced. The calibre – developed over three years in collaboration with Audemars Piguet Le Locle – houses a tourbillon and a split-seconds chronograph, all supported by a skeletonised titanium baseplate with bridges in both titanium and Carbon TPT. It delivers a 70-hour power reserve. Throughout the development, material selection and engineering decisions were guided by the same principles that shape Ferrari's most demanding prototypes: performance, durability and visual coherence. Every element has undergone rigorous testing, simulation and structural optimisation. The result is a watch that pushes the envelope in both watchmaking and design – proof that mechanical complexity and aesthetic sophistication aren't mutually exclusive. Richard Mille's RM 43-01 Tourbillon Split-Seconds Chronograph Ferrari watches, worn by Scuderia Ferrari. PHOTO: RICHARD MILLE The RM 43-01 doesn't just attract attention – it earns it through detail, proportion and purpose. Whether at the races or on your wrist, the watch is a wearable celebration of two brands that refuse to compromise on performance. Call it a statement of synergy: where form follows function, and both speak fluently in the language of speed. Just like admiring that Ferrari engine bay, the RM 43-01 reminds us that sometimes the most beautiful things are the ones engineered to perfection.
South China Morning Post
29-03-2025
- Automotive
- South China Morning Post
Lewis Hamilton, Ferrari and Richard Mille: the racing star sported the million-dollar RM 74-02 Automatic Tourbillon in Shanghai for his first Sprint win with the Scuderia
The Formula One season has just begun, and Lewis Hamilton notched up his first win for Ferrari in the Sprint Race at the Shanghai Grand Prix. On his wrist was a Richard Mille watch, one of several the seven-time world champion has been sporting from the brand in the past few weeks since joining the Scuderia, specifically the RM 74-02 Automatic Tourbillon with a stunning gold edged Carbon TPT case. His teammate, Charles Leclerc , wore the RM 67-02 'Italy'. One of the perks of driving for Ferrari is access to these extraordinary, exclusive watches from luxury watchmaker Richard Mille, which has been sponsoring the Scuderia since 2021. The partnership yielded the incredible RM UP-01 in 2023, a concept watch, just 1.175mm thick. The ultra-complicated timepiece was an idea that was already on the drawing board before the signing of the partnership and is often seen on the wrist of music producer and Louis Vuitton designer Pharrell Williams The distinctive style of the RM 43-01. Photo: Handout Advertisement Their second partnership watch, the RM 43-01 Tourbillon Split-Seconds Chronograph Ferrari, was introduced in Paris just as the F1 practice sessions were starting in Shanghai. With Hamilton and Leclerc otherwise occupied in China, legendary race veterans Alain Prost and Felipe Massa were in attendance. In fact, Massa was Richard Mille's first long-standing partner signing back in 2004, when the brand was just three years old, and whilst not paid, loyally wore their watches in every race. The new timepiece has been conceived with Ferrari's car designers and has more Ferrari in its DNA. The design reverts to the traditional tonneau shape, but with an aerodynamic profile that adopts the smooth airflow incorporated into the sports car design. The cases are made in either titanium or Carbon TPT (layered sheets of carbon fibre) – both lightweight. There were weekly meetings over nearly three years to discuss the integration of materials and details into the watch such as the pushers following the same shape as the signature Ferrari rear lights; design elements from the clutch inspiring the barrel jewel setting; and the crankcase in the chassis echoed in the titanium minute counter bridge, partially visible in the openwork skeleton design. The RM 43-01 in Carbon TPT. Photo: Handout The tourbillon has been moved to 5 o'clock to allow for Ferrari's famous prancing stallion to be engraved on a plate shaped like the wing from the F1 car to appear at 7 o'clock. The RM 43-01 comes equipped with the latest-generation split-seconds mechanism – to measure those lap times, of course, as well as to optimise the chronograph. These sexy new watches come at a price for ardent Ferrari fans: the titanium version is US$1.3 million and the Carbon TPT is US$1.535 million, each limited to 75 pieces. The price is down to the research and development with complicated components, explains Alexandre Mille, who co-runs the brand with his sister Amanda Mille and Maxime Guenat since the retirement of Richard. He points out how difficult these watches are to produce.
WIRED
31-01-2025
- Automotive
- WIRED
How Richard Mille Takes Quartz Watches to a Surprising Level
Jan 31, 2025 8:30 AM A company that emerged from the marine engineering sector holds the secret to the ultra-luxury brand's remarkable material that is as light as plastic, but several times stronger than steel. NTPT pushes its composites to destruction to evaluate factors such as shear resistance. Photograph: Scanderbeg Sauer For the team at North Thin Ply Technology (NTPT), a Lausanne-based manufacturer of high-tech composites for America's Cup yachts, satellites, F1 cars, and aerospace, abstruse topics like interlaminar fracture toughness, the chemistry of resin matrices, and the elastic modulus of fiber-based materials are meat and drink. Less typical, in an industry where performance trumps aesthetics, is NTPT's knack for creating … well, pretty colors and lively patterns within lumps of hardcore materials. But NTPT's work with Richard Mille, the Swiss watch brand known for engineering and designs as highly evolved as its price points (the average is around $311,000 a watch), has taken its R&D team down some divergent innovatory paths, says Olivier Thomassin, the engineer charged with overseeing the Richard Mille collaboration. 'It's led us into investigating a lot of new processes to make patterns and develop new colors, and we've spent a lot of time finding ways to bond together unusual materials,' he says. 'It's not the kind of thing a company like this normally does.' There is little in the watch world that resembles Carbon TPT and Quartz TPT, the composites from which NTPT makes cases for Richard Mille. The flagship watch of the brand's partnership with McLaren Automotive, the RM 11-03, features both: rippling layers of charcoal-toned carbon interlaced with bands of lurid orange. The RM 74-02, a svelte but showy skeletonized tourbillon, repeats the trick with seams of yellow gold fused into the carbon, something Thomassin says took three years to get right. The automatic tape laydown machine overlays strips of tape impregnated with quartz thread. Photograph: Scanderbeg Sauer Or else look to the RM 65-01, a high-octane split-seconds chronograph inspired by motorsports, which recently received a Gen Z–friendly glow-up with versions in banana yellow, baby blue, or soft gray. The colored material has the lightness and feel of plastic, but is several times stronger than stainless steel. For both firms, the collaboration has become a crucial calling card, such that a dedicated facility was opened at NTPT's Lausanne headquarters in 2018, just for making Richard Mille watch cases. Behind the glass walls of this all-white inner sanctum, a big robotic printer shifts repeatedly back and forth along a large table, busily laying down precise strips of sticky-looking material on a spotless surface. Staff in white coveralls administer the machinery, while, to the rear, spools of see-through fibers feed mysteriously into equipment that will process them into micro-thin layers of 'UD' (unidirectional tape), the stuff the machine is depositing. For Richard Mille, color and texture actually turned out to be the by-product of a challenge the brand's eponymous founder set NTPT more than a decade ago. The firm was already making Richard Mille watch cases out of its carbon-fiber variant, Carbon TPT, but Mille asked to brighten the template, says Thomassin. 'He said he wanted a composite for a pure white case, so we started experimenting. We actually ended up with red first.' Most fiber-based composites—think Kevlar, fiberglass, or forged carbon—share basic principles with materials such as concrete or MDF: Tiny strands of a given material are set within a binding matrix, usually a polymer resin, like epoxy. The mixture is shaped, compressed, and heat-cured. The resulting composite is typically very light and extremely strong, with the fibers serving as structural reinforcements to the surrounding matrix. Spools of see-through quartz fibers … Photograph: Scanderbeg Sauer … are then turned into UD tape … … which is layered to create case blanks. It was by using fibers from quartz, a material paradoxically associated with cheapness in watches, that NTPT changed the game for Richard Mille. Being transparent in its purest silica form, quartz composites tend to be used in areas like optics, sensors, medical scanners, and weapon systems. 'Because it's opaque, we can get a real color into the resin mix, and keep that color fixed in,' says Thomassin. 'It's the only fiber where we can do that.' Since NTPT specializes in the chemical formulation of its own resin solutions, it was able to research ways to add rich pigments, and to fix these within a composite called Quartz TPT. The first Richard Mille watches to use it, in stripy white and bright red respectively, appeared in 2015. The terrifically odd look—bold colors whipped through with layered textures—quickly became an exclusive and conspicuous calling card for the brand. Every shade and style, says Alexandre Mille, the watch company's global commercial director, is the result of extensive R&D. 'It isn't just picking a Pantone or a treatment and adding it in. Every new color represents a substantial technical effort to produce it and to get it right, without any compromise to the material itself,' he says. For instance, the light gray shade seen in last year's RM 65-01 was originally intended for another watch. 'That was three years ago, but it wasn't ready,' says Mille. 'So we continued refining it until we could use it.' Back in the noughties, it was the transformation of Formula 1 and supercar engineering that first brought carbon fiber, along with other novel composites, to the attention of luxury watch brands. Richard Mille was an early adopter: When he'd founded his brand in 2001, his big idea was to translate the high-tech wonder of frontline automotive engineering into something wrist-bound—'a racing car for the wrist' as he described it. Richard Mille RM 65-01 Split-Seconds Chronograph Photograph: Richard Mille Richard Mille RM 11-03 Flyback Chronograph Richard Mille RM 35-03 Automatic Winding Rafael Nadal (Blue Quartz) Accordingly, all manner of material innovations and technical ideas—carbon nanotubes, graphene, silicon carbide, movements suspended in pulleys—have made their way into Richard Mille's watchmaking. It is responsible for some of the lightest and thinnest watches ever made, such as the 1.75-millimeter-thick RM UP-01 Ferrari. But it is the partnership with NTPT, a company that emerged from the marine engineering sector (it started out in sail-making technology) that has been especially transformative. Alexandre Mille describes the relationship as 'like working with a brother. There's a lot of cross-pollination of ideas, depending on what they are researching that can inspire creative concepts for us, or vice versa.' The research that led to the use of opaque quartz does carry a downside: Unless the manufacturing environment is very closely controlled, dust particles and other impurities will show up in the finished material. For most NTPT products that wouldn't be a problem, but the luxury industry—and particularly quarter-million-dollar watches—requires a different level of perfectionism. Hence the facility's sealed-off 'clean room' environment. The 'thin ply technology' in NTPT's name refers to the use of much thinner layers (or plies) of resin-impregnated material than is found in standard composites. Thomassin says this allows for greater precision in tailoring the mechanical properties of whatever is being made, as well as achieving the kind of aesthetic consistency that a luxury product requires. The base fibers arrive from suppliers as rolls of thread, which are stacked up and distributed via an intricate creel system. The translucent quartz thread consists of over a thousand tiny, interwound silica fibers or filaments, each one no more than a few microns in diameter. NTPT's proprietary system unravels these filaments from each other and aligns them in a wider, unidirectional layer, before binding them in resin to create a broad 'prepreg' tape that's at most 45 microns thick. A roll of the prepreg tape is loaded into a robot device known as an ATL (automatic tape laydown). With its boxy red body and rivets, the ATL rather resembles a giant piece of Meccano, skimming slowly back and forth as it builds up a precise crosshatch of layers. The autoclave oven in which the quartz goes through the curing process, heating to 120 degrees C. Photograph: Scanderbeg Sauer It's the overlaying of these prepreg layers in strictly angled sequences that allows factors like load-bearing capacity, stiffness, fatigue performance, and resistance to cracking to be managed and directed. While more intensive to manufacture, thin-ply composites are designed to maintain part integrity over longer periods, and at greater stresses, than standard composites with thicker plies. (Elsewhere in the building, a lab puts bits of composite through all manner of trials—pulling, twisting, compressing to breaking point—though Richard Mille's own suite of tests is apparently even more demanding.) For the watch cases, this means layering at 45-degree increments—what's known as a 'quasi-isotropic' formation, meaning near-uniform strength and stiffness in every direction. Stacks of this preform (the combined layers) are then laid by hand onto curved molds. Between the watch case body and the bezel that sits on top, there are around 600 plies in total which, as they bond together, creates the unique striated patterning. The hallmark wavy stripes of a watch like the RM 35-03, the latest signature piece for tennis superstar Rafael Nadal, available in either a silvery-gray, or deep blue with rippling bands of light blue, are made by including differently colored stacks at regular intervals. Fusing and hardening the material takes place under heat and pressure in an autoclave oven resembling a small blue submersible. Lengths of composite, laid on the molds and sealed in vacuum bags, are compressed at 6 bars and heated to 120 degrees C. The resulting Quartz TPT block is finally cut up into barrel-shaped case blanks by a high-precision waterjet, before being sent to Richard Mille's own manufacturing facility in the Jura mountains for CNC machining into finished watch cases. Quartz watches they may be, but also around 3,000 times more expensive—and about the same degree more engineered—than what that term customarily means.
