Freshly minted collaboration
The year 2026 is definitely a new beginning for one of the most revered motorcar marques’ F1 racing division, the Aston Martin Aramco Formula One Team, established in 2021, a division of the Aston Martin Lagonda, as they are embarking on a completely new chapter of their journey in the greatest motoring show on earth! There is just no words to describe what is happening, except this, they have a new aerodynamicist heading the design of their F1 car in the form of Adrian Newey, just in case you didn’t know, is one of the most talented and GOAT in the world of F1 car design joining the team; they have a new power unit supplied by Honda; and finally Breitling is now their new timepiece partnership, which includes their road-going sports car division, Aston Martin. Yes, a lot is going on! And the whole motor racing world will have its eyes on the Aston Martin F1 team reinvention! Give them a bit of time, and they will be a force to reckon with.
We are here to talk about the inaugural wristwatch that commemorates the partnership between two great marques in the world of sports, Breitling and Aston Martin Aramco Formula One Team, this round. Breitling has chosen the Navitimer to kickstart this new collaboration, and you don’t need to be a genius to wonder why. The collection is the superlative form of sports watches out there, with no other pretension except to provide the most precise calculations for the racers to tabulate their speed and distance right down to the milliseconds. The latest generation of Navitimer is less intimidating than its predecessors. Readability has very much improved, with cleaner divisions of the slide scales and markers. To some, it’s still not an easy task to read if you don’t know what you are looking at.
The dial is laid out with several concentric chapter rings in alternate black and white, making it much easier to read if you know what you are looking at. An easy read. A silver tri-compax layout on a black and green centre dial, made of carbon-fibre borrowed from the material used in the F1 cars, features a 30-minute chrono at three o’clock, the chrono hours at six o’clock, and a continuous seconds at nine o’clock. All have black transfer markers and Arabic numerals, with a black indicator. The large main hour indexes and the hours and minutes hands are coated with SuperLuminova. An outstanding lime green central chrono seconds hand, in conjunction with the speckled block of British racing green on the dial, reflects the colours of the livery of the Aston Martin Formula One cars.
To power the inaugural wristwatch is Breitling’s automatic Manufacture Calibre B01, with the industry’s most respected mechanism, the column-wheel with vertical clutch arrangement, which eliminates the Chronograph gears from jamming when they gnash against each other found in horizontal layout; and it comes with 70 hours of power reserve. It also comes with a COSC certification for its precision.
All the marvels are housed in a 43mm titanium case, a metal widely used in motor racing for its toughness and lightness, which is an absolute essential to keep the weights down, and so it is an advantage for you, as a Chronograph can be quite heavy on the wrist. The sophisticated hue and clean readability make it a desirable timepiece for those looking for something sporty for the weekends and holidays.
