Felipe Massa test drives Richard Mille watches

What’s their view

Richard Mille and Felipe Massa © Richard Mille

Since 2004, the racing driver Felipe Massa has been testing Richard Mille watches in real-life conditions.The champion tells all.

Marie Le Berre

On Wednesday January 20th, Richard Mille welcomed a very special guest to its stand at the SIHH 2010 in the person of Felipe Massa, the Formula One driver and "face" of the brand."Face" in inverted commas, as Massa does more than simply strike a pose for photographers while wearing his sponsor’s watch."Drivers such as myself don’t usually wear a watch when racing.It can get in our way, and it’ll probably end up getting smashed," Felipe Massa explains."I’m almost certainly the only one who does and I can only do so with a Richard Mille."

Nicolas Todt, Felipe Massa’s manager, first came up with the idea of contacting Richard Mille."It was the early 2000s," the driver recalls."I was looking for a partner in the watch segment.This seemed a natural choice as we are constantly racing against time.I contacted Richard Mille because his watches are known as the watchmaking equivalent of Formula One.At first he thought it was a little too soon for him, but a couple of months later he called me back."Under their partnership, instigated in 2004, Felipe Massa wears the watches while racing so as to test their resistance in what can only be described as exceptional conditions.These watches must also be lightweight and ergonomically designed.

F1 inspiration

"The watches I wear are perfect for me.They show no signs of damage, despite being subjected to intense vibrations, and I almost can’t feel them on my wrist," Massa comments.He began by testing the RM006, an experimental model with a carbon nanofibre baseplate, manufactured as a limited edition of twenty.This collaboration between Richard Mille and Felipe Massa has also given rise to the experimental RM009, an extraordinarily light mechanical watch with an alusic plate (an aluminium-silicon-carbide alloy), unaffected by rapid acceleration and deceleration.It was produced as a limited edition of twenty-five.

Richard Mille’s collections also include Felipe Massa special editions, such as the RM005 self-winding watch, unveiled in 2005 and no longer in production.Still available are the RM011 self-winding flyback chronograph, launched in 2007, and two split-seconds chronographs :the RM004-V2 with hand-wound movement and the RM008-V2 with hand-wound tourbillon movement, both launched in 2009.Resistance and comfort guaranteed for Richard Mille’s personal test pilot, with the aesthetics and perfection of the brand thrown in for good measure! ■

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