Richard Mille and McLaren celebrate their fifth year of partnership with the McLaren Speedtail RM 40-01 automatic tourbillon

The most ambitious collaboration to date, the remarkable watch, honors the fastest, most advanced, and most exotic street car McLaren has ever produced – the futuristic Speedtail.

Following the success of its predecessors, including the Ultralight McLaren F1 Tourbillon Split Seconds Chronograph RM 50-03, the lightest split-second tourbillon chronograph in the world, Richard Mille introduces its latest watch highlighting the ongoing partnership with McLaren – the RM 40- 01 Automatic Tourbillon McLaren Speedtail.

This is by far the most extreme watch made by Richard Mille and developed for the specific hypercar design of the McLaren Speedtail. Considered one of the most remarkable and breathtaking car designs of all time, it is also the fastest road car McLaren has ever built. The stunning machine is radical in form and function and is based on one of the purest forms of all, the tear.

Seen from above, the streamlined three-seat Grand Tourer silhouette resembles that of a drop of water, nature’s most aerodynamically efficient shape. A handpicked team of no less than 12 aerodynamics experts worked on the shape of the Speedtail, which has designed and developed some of the most advanced airflow systems ever used on any car of any kind.

The hypercar covers 112 meters per second at a top speed of 402 km / h, making it the fastest McLaren road car to date. And it was McLaren’s relentless pursuit of aerodynamic efficiency that formed the starting point for the design of the McLaren Speedtail RM 40-01 automatic tourbillon.

According to Rob Melville, Design Director of McLaren Automotive, the new RM 40-01 perfectly shows why the two brands are ideal partners: “There are many similarities between the way Richard Mille and McLaren share design and construction challenges such as weight savings tackle reducing vibration exposure and minimizing drag. With the RM 40-01 we did a lot to share the highlights of the car and the philosophy behind it. With the Speedtail, we wanted to produce a car that had an artistic quality. This has certainly been shown in the watch, which wonderfully reflects the many different details of the Speedtail in its workmanship, its materials and its uncompromising design. “

Under the direction of Richard Milles technical director Julien Boillat, it took the house an unprecedented 2,800 hours for 18 months to perfect the lines of the watch. Due to the unprecedented complexity of the design, five prototypes were made before the optimal shape was achieved. The biggest challenge was that the case at 12 o’clock is significantly wider than at 6 o’clock and tapers further between the titanium bezel and the case back, which are separated from each other by a case band made of carbon TPT and titanium columns of unequal length.

(Image: Johnwycherley)

Boillat explains: “The watch has one of the highest levels of refinement that Richard Mille has ever made. Much has changed with our anglers and polishers. The attention to detail is extreme, with mirror-polished, smooth and satin-finished effects in different areas and the combined use of titanium and carbon TPT. The housing itself consists of 69 individual parts. “

It took 18 months to perfect a unique “triple contour” top crystal glass to account for the decreasing taper and thickness of the bezel to protect the state-of-the-art movement of the RM 40-01. Despite the extraordinary case, Salvador Arbona, Richard Milles’s technical director of motion, has developed a watch motor that seamlessly occupies the entire space and introduces a level of mechanical sophistication that makes the RM 40-01 automatic tourbillon an extraordinary companion to the Speedtail.

The caliber CRMT4, which drives the watch, introduces the first in-house development of a power reserve display as well as the oversized complications in selecting the date and functions – all of which are the first to be manufactured on a dedicated tourbillon. Before the final version, which is incorporated into the watch, three power reserve systems were developed.

(Image: Johnwycherley)

The completely new movement architecture required an unbelievable 8,600 hours of development time, a large part of which went into completing the extreme level of detail. These include some wheels that feature a McLaren logo that adorns the Speedtail’s hood, while the domed parts have new surface profiles that were needed to translate the vehicle’s curves (this can be seen on the tourbillon bridge).

In order to maintain the balance of the watch and its elegance, the date corrector was positioned at 8 o’clock – a technically far more complex, but also more aesthetically pleasing solution than the simpler way of locating it at 11 o’clock. The platinum and rose gold winding rotor is inspired by the bonnet of the Speedtail and the barrel mount through the roof line. The gentle downward curve that the mechanism follows from 12 to 6 o’clock is reminiscent of the brushed metal partition between the car’s cockpit and its body. A demarcation that McLaren adopted from the design of earlier Richard Mille watches. The orange line that runs from the lower part of the movement onto the harness mimics the vertical brake light that is mounted on the back of the Speedtail.

The automatic tourbillon McLaren Speedtail RM 40-01 is a limited edition of 106 watches that reflect the same number of McLaren Speedtails produced.

(All images: Johnwycherley)