A Very Moser Smartwatch at the Canadian Grand Prix

If I’m being honest, I have to admit that I was a strange choice to attend this press trip to the Canada GP in Montreal. At least on paper. I could be excommunicated from the watch world for what I’m about to say, but I have to speak my truth: I just don’t really care all that much about cars. 

I own a car, for sure. And I drive it on an almost daily basis. But the fact is, because I live in a very walkable neighborhood in my city, I find myself getting annoyed when I’m forced to drive somewhere. Driving is a huge pain, after all, mostly because you have to deal with other drivers, but also because cars are pretty annoying. Mine, like its driver, is getting older. And these days when I start it up I often discover some new ailment that will force me to part with money likely earmarked for the Watch Fund, just to keep it up to the standards of the State of New Hampshire. 

Anyway, this is a long winded way of saying I didn’t come into this experience a big F1 fan, because watching other people drive always seemed fundamentally like something I wouldn’t be all that interested in. And I’ll save you the suspense here: I didn’t come out of this experience as an F1 convert, ready to binge watch every season of “Drive to Survive.” But I did come away from it with a much better appreciation for the complexity of the sport, and I can certainly see how and why so many seem to be obsessed with it. And it also became clear to me how H. Moser fits in here. In fact, Moser’s approach to being a sponsor of an F1 team strikes me as fundamentally different from what we typically see from brands who develop relationships in the world of sports, and that’s a topic worthy of discussion all on its own. 

F1 has been having a moment in the world of watches and more broadly in our popular culture for at least the last few years. One wonders, with the release of the F1 film starring Brad Pitt (literally opening today, if you’re reading this on the day it’s published), the continued interest in the sport among the general public, and absolute pervasiveness of F1 partnerships in the watch world, if we’ve reached some kind of peak this year. Walking around Palexpo at Watches & Wonders earlier this spring, it was striking to see so many open wheeled racecars present in booths, and not every brand that has a relationship with an F1 team even had a car on hand (Moser falls into that category). As an outsider, this kind of thing always makes me skeptical when it comes to enduring popularity. When we see a lot of people, brands, and other corporate entities jumping into something all at once, often that means we’re closer to the end than to the beginning. 

And if what I saw in Montreal in terms of the watches H. Moser showed us had amounted to nothing more than a cynical licensing arrangement I’d probably be more convinced than ever that F1’s popularity, at least in watch circles, is somewhat overblown. I can’t say I was surprised to find that the opposite was the case, because Moser, in my view, has always been among the more thoughtful of the independent brands on my radar in terms of messaging and coming up with a coherent concept for their watches. That’s honestly what has always appealed to me most about the brand. Their watches are loaded with ideas, and have a perspective on the industry itself. And while not every Moser is my cup of tea aesthetically, I place a lot of value in the brand’s vision, and frankly the fact that they have one at all. Many brands simply do not. 

I wrote about the two watches Moser has made as part of their partnership with the Alpine Motorsports F1 team shortly after they were announced. The new Drivers Edition Streamliner was apparently designed with input from Alpine driver Pierre Gasly, and the heavy skeletonization, particularly the exposed winding rotor viewable from the dial side, feels like something that a competitive racecar driver would opt for. 

I’m a pretty big fan of the Stremliner in general, and while there are elements of this watch that work really well (I loved the blue case) I ultimately thought that visually things get a little lost in that dial. There’s just a lot going on. It’s impressive, for sure, but in terms of its practicality, it feels more like something you’d strap on after a race to make a statement in a post-race interview than a watch you’d wear day in and day out. And I think that’s perfectly OK. Ultimately the point of a watch brand sponsoring an F1 team is to increase that brand’s visibility and help them to be more recognized, and to do that you need a watch that stands out on the wrist. 

The watch that really became the focus of the weekend, though, was the Mechanics Edition Streamliner. During our time at the track, every member of our group was given one of these watches to wear for the day, so I was able to get pretty well acquainted with it. In the weeks since its reveal, there have been a lot of questions about what it actually does, and how it fits into Moser’s larger plans, and fortunately I think I was mostly able to get my arms around both of those topics during my time in Montreal. 

As H. Moser CEO Edouard Meylan reminded us over the course of the weekend, the Alpine Motorsports relationship is unique for the brand. They simply don’t have these kinds of deals with other sports teams or corporate partners, and the relationship with Gasly is even more unique as he is their only celebrity ambassador (“friend of the brand” in Moser terminology). The approach to the watches coming out of the partnership then would also be unique in that, at least for these two pieces, the designs (and functionality) are inextricably linked to the Alpine team. That might sound obvious, but these watches go beyond applying a new colorway to an existing design, which is what most making watches that are associated with F1 teams seem keen to do. 

The Mechanics Edition is a smartwatch designed to be worn by key members of the Alpine Motorsports crew over the course of a full race weekend. The movement, developed with Sequent, is calibrated to provide alerts to team members wearing the watch at specific times that are of importance to the team. There’s a countdown to the start of each practice, qualifying lap, and the race itself for example, and notifications that alert crew members of important timing intervals that are key to a successful race weekend. This seems straightforward, but as an F1 novice, the many arcane rules relating to when cars can be worked on and when that work must stop were new revelations to me, and of course a watch that provides that information in a reliable way to everyone at the same time is something that would be incredibly useful. 

A question you might be asking yourself would be: can’t this all just be done with an Apple Watch? Honestly, probably yes. As I wore the the Mechanics Edition watch and received buzzing notifications over the course of a long day, it felt very much like an Apple Watch experience, and I’m sure there’s a developer out there who could create some kind of app that does exactly what Sequent’s movement accomplishes on the Mechanics Edition. There’s no crazy new tech here – we’re talking, essentially, about a series of synched alarms. 

But that’s not really the point. The point, I think, is that these watches will be on the wrist of everyone in the garage, and become part of the Alpine Motorsports uniform that is identifiable on sight by millions of F1 fans all over the world. That’s a level of exposure that H. Moser has never come close to, and will familiarize many, many people with the brand who would otherwise never come across it. It’s analogous, I think, to the way Richard Mille put a watch on the wrist of Rafael Nadal for years during his prime. In short sleeves, a large watch in a bright color was easily visible, and over the course of a long career many tennis fans simply absorbed what it was, seeing it on his wrist while in competition (not just in that post-match interview room) and that type of brand awareness plays a large role in a company’s success. It’s against the rules for an F1 driver to wear a watch during a race, but so much of the experience of watching a race and taking part in the culture of the sport is linked to observing the rest of the team – I imagine lots of eyeballs will see the Mechanics watch. 

I was also a little bit surprised by how much I liked the Mechanics watch as a pure aesthetic object. It combines a number of familiar Moser motifs (the offset dial, borrowed from the Cylindrical Tourbillon, a vibrant blue fumé effect, and the use of expansive black spaces to create contrast). It’s been a challenge in the age of the smart watch for a traditional Swiss luxury brand to create something in the category that really feels like them and not just a case shape with a chintzy user interface grafted onto it, but Moser gets around this with a thoughtful, restrained design that truly just looks like a watch 90% of the time and not an electronic gadget while limiting the core functionality to something that’s highly specific and niche. It feels experimental, but in a way that’s also accessible. 

In the immediate aftermath of the watch’s launch, I saw a lot of comments on social media and elsewhere asking about a standalone version of the Mechanics Edition piece (it’s only available as part of a set with the limited edition Drivers Edition, and will also be made available to owners of last year’s Pioneer Cylindrical Tourbillon made in partnership with Alpine). The Moser team was careful not to rule out anything out or tease any future projects with Sequent, so I truly have very little idea if the Mechanics Edition is a strange diversion for the brand, or the start of an entirely new category. But at a time when MB&F has been able to generate a lucrative new revenue stream by releasing affordable watches aimed at the enthusiast community, and even brands like Grönefeld are getting in the mix, it doesn’t seem preposterous that this might be a way for Moser to attract new customers in a completely different segment. This however, tied as it is to the needs of a single F1 team, is decidedly not a mass market product.

As far as the F1 experience itself goes, I have to say, I highly recommend it. The experience at the track, even on a practice day, was a lot of fun, and I absolutely feel that I had the overwhelming sensory experience that is so often discussed when people talk about seeing F1 in person. It’s hard to find new ways of saying the cars are really loud, so I’ll say exactly that, and that the complimentary earplugs provided at the entrance of the Paddock Club should absolutely be taken advantage of.

What I’ve spent most of my time thinking about in the days since returning from Montreal though is not the sound and fury of the sport that is so often discussed, but all the behind the scenes stuff that we were able to see. This is old news of course for longtime F1 enthusiasts, but the complexity of the entire operation was overwhelming. An F1 team is made up of a number of people that can easily exceed 1,000 once you factor in the support staff who deal with everything from catering to travel logistics, to marketing and other administrative duties. While not every member of a team travels with the drivers and race team week to week, there are enough that do to make each race an almost inconceivably complex technical orchestration. It makes an incredible amount of sense, then, that members of that team should have a watch that not only keeps them on schedule, but bonds them together symbolically as well, as a group working together to achieve a challenging goal. Watches, even purpose built tool watches like the Mechanics Edition, are objects that have the unique ability to do exactly that. H. Moser