It took a few years for IWC and the Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One Team to bring the curtain off their first-ever F1 team watch, but there we have it. Here is the new IWC Pilot’s Watch Chronograph 41 Edition Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One Team (the full name is this long), the team’s official timepiece to debut during the Miami Grand Prix and become standard equipment to race track staff and engineers along with the team’s drivers Hamilton and Russell.
The new product aims to strengthen IWC‘s foothold in F1 following similar partnerships, like Bell & Ross themed timepieces carrying the official Alpine livery and using the first-ever Miami GP as a venue. Finally, the Pilot’s Watch Chronograph is IWC‘s racing choice par excellence, standing as the flagship model for motorsport competition which makes sense since speed is synonymous with the Chrono complication. In brief, we’ve spotted plenty of Pilot’s watches in and out of the paddock so far, including Toto Wolff‘s experimental Shock Absorber XPL or the old-gen Ingenieur collection in the past, but a Chronograph is up to the task more than anything else.
Is it just marketing or what? It is undoubtedly very close to ordinary co-branding, yet IWC has relentlessly worked to turn an aviation-conceived timepiece into a racing machine.
After launching the Pilot’s Watch Chronograph Edition AMG, the Chronograph 41 Edition Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One Team adopts the grade 5 titanium theme, whose lightness and mechanical resistance are familiar to any sportscars engineered in Affalterbach and for F1 racing. However, unlike the AMG model, the new one is thinner at 14,6 mm and smaller at 41 mm across instead.
While the 41 mils case size is top-notch, the Chrono’s thickness makes the watch a bit hefty, despite the sandblasted titanium alloy shaving off unwanted weight while boosting comfort, as exemplified by the brand’s new releases during Watches and Wonders.
The IWC Pilot’s Watch Chronograph 41 Edition Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One Team is a stand-out piece: the matte black dial contrasts with green Petronas filled numerals, and it intensely glows in the dark. The watch comes with a subtle, sporty canvas-effect calfskin strap with contrasting green stitching or a replacement green rubber strap on a pin buckle you can swap via a quick-change mechanism. You’ll then turn it into a summer-ready 100-meter water-resistant all-rounder.
The titanium case back houses a flat sapphire glass, revealing the IWC calibre 69385, a column-wheel movement capable of 46 hours of power reserve when fully wound. A double inscription confirms it is a celebratory model and adds that “old school” co-branding detail which proves not so intrusive as photos might suggest. The new IWC Pilot’s Watch Chronograph 41 Edition Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One Team costs 8,450 Euros, more than its standard 41 mm sibling, but offers titanium as a plus. You’ll love it if you’re an F1 fan, and you can count on a rubber replacement strap to turn it into a two-face product: as sober as it gets with the calfskin strap or a sporty show-off timepiece whose attitude is all but aviation.
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(Photo credit: Horbiter®)
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