If you are one of the lucky 399 people who has already secured their £2m McLaren W1, obviously you’ll need to also invest in your CHF320,000 (approx £285,000) serial-number matching Richard Mille RM 65-01 McLaren W1 automatic split seconds chronograph. In fact, even if you missed out on the car, you might yet get one of the extra 101 watches that Richard Mille will produce, or any of the 399 chassis-specific ones that the car buyers don’t snap up. Seems unlikely, but possible.
The RM 65-01 is Richard Mille’s fourth collaboration with the Woking race outfit and supercar manufacturer since 2016, following the motorsport-inspired 75-piece RM 50-03 Tourbillon Split Seconds Chrono in 2017, Senna GTR partnering 500-off 2018 RM 11-03 auto Flyback Chronograph McLaren and 2021 Speedtail inspired RM 40-01 auto Tourbillon of which, like the car, there were 106.
Click here for our full story on the 1275ps hybrid W1, principally powered by a 4-litre twin turbo V8 that revs to a mighty 9200rpm (!) and has a party piece that is a rear spoiler that extends 30mm behind the car for aero. It flies to 200kph in under 6 secs and is limited to an adequate 350kph.
It was launched on 6 October and the RM 65-01 was unveiled the following day at the McLaren Technology Centre in Surrey. Put together by a 25-strong team, the watch has been in the pipeline since Richard Mille creative and development director Cécile Guenat visited McLaren in 2022 to see the W1 styling clay. She opted for taking her lead from an overhead view of the W1, clearly visible in the watch’s innovative indented double bezel. The new titanium skeleton dial is also based on the McLaren’s rims, uses the marque’s signature colours and is design to have the look and feel of a dashboard.
Richard Mille creative and development director Cécile Guenat visited McLaren in 2022 to see the W1 styling clay. She opted for taking her lead from an overhead view of the W1
The 480-part, 5hz (36,000 vibrations per hour) RMAC4 movement uses several features of previous watches including the split seconds chrono ultimate complication and the rapid self-winding system activated by a dedicated Quartz TPT pusher. There are 89 elements even apart from the movement, many of them carbon TPT – in 30micron thick layers – and like previous McLaren collaborations the crown is inspired by the car. With the Senna it was the steering wheel, this time it’s the splines on the driveshafts. It is highly resilient, has an integral strap and the familiar triple curvature of the grade 5 titanium back-plate for comfort.
Salvador Arbona, Technical Director for Movements at Richard Mille, said: ‘This project perfectly illustrates Richard Mille’s philosophy of constantly pushing technical boundaries to create innovative watches that include the latest watchmaking developments with a functional, practical and high-performance approach.’
