SPORTY AT HEART
This piece, an upgrade of the brand’s first-ever flyback chronograph, combines high-powered engineering and eye-catching design. The perfect combo to become the stuff of legend.
To celebrate the 100th anniversary of the world’s most prestigious endurance race, Richard Mille has rolled out an exclusive 150-piece limited series. What sets it apart? The RM 72-01 Le Mans Classic echoes the technical assets of the model showcased back in 2020 yet adds a captivating stylistic twist. In a nutshell, it comes equipped with the first-ever chronograph caliber, CRMC1, boasting an in-house developed and assembled flyback function. This mechanism, created using some 425 components, embraces all the know-how of the watchmaker from Les Breuleux: baseplate and bridges in grade 5 titanium, an ingenious patented dual clutch system with oscillating pinions, a variable-inertia balance wheel, a rotor in 950 platinum crafted from a single block of material.
Here, this elaborate skeletonized selfwinding movement comes into play in a two-toned scenography featuring a case ingeniously espousing white and green TPT® quartz. This graphic composition jazzes up the watch’s personality. This finery, inspired by the colors of classic sports cars, graces the time data with a case that’s on a par with their functions. The counters, suitable for measuring time up to a whole day, flaunt extra colors in addition to the ones of the case. The hour-totalizer “16” stands out in its red cartouche, a tip of the hat to Le Mans 24 Hours’ kick-off time (i.e. 4pm). What’s more, there’s also a vertical semi-instantaneous date encircled by a frame that reproduces the checkered flag. Once again, high-tech and design are but one!
