Richard Mille’s new McLaren watch has a ‘Jump Start’ button

Such is the world of luxury products, where customers of McLaren Automotive’s recently announced W1 hypercar can order a watch to go with it.

The fourth timepiece produced as a result of McLaren’s long-standing relationship with luxury watchmaker Richard Mille, the RM 65-01 “McLaren W1 Edition” was announced this week at a press conference at the automaker’s headquarters in Woking.

Billed as something approaching a hypercar on the wrist, the watch, which will cost 320,000 Swiss francs plus taxes ($373,300) is a tribute to the car’s design language, revealed to the world last Sunday. With a split-second chronograph movement and a few other tricks, it houses what Richard Mille says is the most complex automatic movement it has ever produced.

The movement, consisting of 480 parts, beats at a frequency of 5 Hz, allowing intervals to be measured to the nearest tenth of a second. The split seconds function allows the wearer to time two events at the same time, so you know with pinpoint accuracy how much faster you are than any other car on the road (or racetrack.) Pushers at 2, 4, and 10 o’clock, designed to simulate exhausts in the W1, it controls the chronograph, their roles defined in McLaren’s “papaya orange” and a very bright shade of baby blue, but a clean orange fourth movement that will catch your eye. .

Let me start

This controls a very different function, different from the RM 65 line. You could call it a “skip” button—something I hope the W1 won’t need. It is a quick winder, designed in such a way that in the rare case that the watch runs out of power, you can wind it up again with a few presses of your thumb.

It makes way for a rack-and-pinion mechanism that powers the mainspring without removing the watch from your wrist. Richard Mille says the 125 pushers will fully move the watch, but it’s intended to provide instant power rather than a replacement for the automatic winding system—itself a more complex one, with an adjustable rotor that can be adjusted to suit lifestyle. wearer, according to the brand. Basically, if you are the active type it will be set to deliver less force with each rotation, and vice versa if you are not moving much.