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We haven’t remarked on it all that much to this point, but one of the inescapable trends at Watches & Wonders this year was a prevalence of F1 cars making appearances around the Palexpo. If you scheduled your meetings in a particular way, you could easily be convinced that every Swiss watch brand has some level of involvement with the sport. IWC, of course, is just beginning to promote F1, the highly anticipated new film starring Brad Pitt that is said to feature many, many IWC watches. And then there’s TAG Heuer, whose parent company LVMH secured a lucrative deal with Formula 1 in the off season, and returned TAG to official timekeeper status. Both of these brands had actual cars in their booths, and they drew a crowd all week. Then there’s H. Moser, a sponsor of the Alpine team, and finally (please get in the comments if I’ve missed one) there’s Tudor, a partner of the Visa Cash App Racing Bulls Formula One Team, who took this weekend’s Miami GP as an opportunity to release their latest racing themed watch, the Black Bay Chrono Carbon 25.
The limited edition (2,025 numbered examples) chronograph is modeled on the Black Bay Chronograph, a watch that has seen its share of special editions in the last few years, mostly by way of colored dials. This watch is a little different as it represents an all new case material for the Black Bay Chrono, making use of Tudor’s carbon fiber composite material (the caseback, pushers, and crown are all rendered in titanium and PVD coated to match the case material). Tudor has been experimenting with carbon fiber these last few years via their Pelagos FXD lineup with time only and chronograph versions of that watch made for the Alinghi Red Bull Racing team, so there’s a logical connection here between high speed yacht racing and some of the fastest cars on the planet.
Still, bringing carbon fiber to the Black Bay line is a big move. The Black Bay is Tudor’s more historically minded dive watch line. The Pelagos – especially the FXD watches – are more contemporary, and tech focused. It makes a certain amount of logical sense that Tudor would introduce carbon fiber into that family, whereas with the Black Bay it seems, at first blush, to be somewhat incongruous.
And yet, here we are, with a racing themed dive chronograph in blue and white that evokes the livery of the VCARB team. The diving lineage here is another strange quirk, but honestly it’s not dramatically more strange to see a racing theme applied here than it is to see this watch in its standard guise. It’s always straddled two worlds and is almost certainly the least “divey” of any watch in the Black Bay family, save perhaps the bezel-free time only Black Bays.
In terms of specs, the carbon Black Bay Chrono measures in at 42mm, which is a single millimeter larger than the steel versions of the watch. It’s still 200 meters water resistant, and runs on the MT5813 chronograph caliber, with 70 hours of power reserve, a column wheel, and a silicon balance spring.
The Carbon 25 carries a retail price of $7,575, which is a premium of $1,800 over the steel version. That’s a significant increase in price, but it’s worth noting that a numbered LE from Tudor is a genuinely rare thing, and a watch like this in an unusual material and associated with a racing team is an extremely niche product. For serious F1 fans who might be used to spending $100 or more for a hat or a T-shirt at a race, it might not seem like an absurd asking price. Tudor
