Eating up the tarmac with a sense of style
BR 03 41mm was launched in September. It has been creating small but high-amplitude ripples in the horology pond. The difference of 1mm from its predecessor, though small has been very effective as it has gained new and old fans. It has started a series of new iterations as we saw the new BR 03 41mm Gyrocompass in early October. As you are reading this article, another brand-new iteration, the BR 03-94 Blacktrack has been unveiled.
The BR 03-94 Blacktrack, as you can see, is special, loaded with design language that is familiar and yet different in many ways. The story starts with Bruno Belamich (the founder and Creative Director of Bell & Ross) has always had a passionate proclivity towards motorbikes. The watch is a collaboration between Bell & Ross’ designers and Sasha Lakic, a French product designer, resulting in the superbly futuristic-looking Blacktrack BT-06 motorcycle inspired by aeronautical designs, namely the stealth fighter jet. It’s from there the wristwatch took shape.
This year Bell & Ross design team has outdone themselves in the design and aesthetics of the watch to another level. The watch took its design inspiration from the motorcycle and aesthetics of the stealth fighter jet. The basic architecture is still very the BR 03, but the first thing one notices is the four faceted corners of the watch case with Philip’s screw in the centre of each corner, a detail inspired by the stealth planes. The faceted corners geometrically transformed the bezel into an octagonal shape that frames a round dial.
The dial, on the other hand, resembles a dashboard, and yes this time it’s a dashboard of a motorcycle with the chronograph counters inspired by the bike handlebars. The elongated octagonal gauge group host the 30-minute chrono counters with a red indicator at nine o’clock and the continuous seconds at three o’clock, with the date window in red numerals. The dark grey dial is decorated with vertical black cutouts resembling the cooling gills of the engine of the bike and the hour and minute indices are and skeleton hands are coated with SuperLuminova and a central red Chrono seconds hand. If you observe closely when the seconds hand lies right above the minute hand, their counter-weight will form the letter ‘B’ as in Blacktrack. A tachymeter scale decorates the inner bezel. The dial aesthetics, without a doubt, resembles a futurist dashboard of not just the motorcycle but also the cockpit of a stealth fighter, which the inspirations come from. One last design element that gives it that extra edge is the watch can be placed in the centre of the console of the motorcycle, purely for aesthetics if nothing more.
Last but not least, the watch is powered by an automatic Chronograph Calibre BR-CAL.301, which harnessed 42 hours of power reserve, and it is housed in a straight line and angular ceramic case at 42mm of course and not a 41mm as it reserved only for the automatic. It comes with a black leather strap with red stitching inspired by the leather saddle of the motorcycle, which itself is powered by a 1200cc engine like all sports bikes, it is sleek, small and light to achieve the optimum weight and power ratio, for the most part, of course, its performance.
