April
2006
When
it comes to auto racing, most people think it's all about speed
- fast cars, engines, tires, etc. Wrong. Auto racing is all about
timing. Drivers are not after speed for its own sake. The buzz
comes from lap times, braking times, acceleration times, pit stop
times and the precise, marginal differences between them that
build incrementally to the outcome of the race.
Auto
racing and watches, motor racing and chronometry, have
always gone together. Rarely is the association stronger than
in Grand Prix racing, where the technology of the cars is the
ultimate expression of precision timing.
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TAG
Heuer
Formula 1 Watch
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It
is also why, up and down the pit lane, race drivers, team owners
and engineers have always been fascinated by watches, and
why watch companies flood into the sport with devices ranging
from stopwatches to wristwatches to lap-time counters.
The racing teams use the timekeeping industry to develop their
competitive edge, and the timekeeping industry uses the sport
to develop its watches.
"Auto
racing obliges us to take on challenges to make instruments that
would otherwise seem impossible," said Stéphane Linder,
product development director at TAG Heuer of Switzerland.
Few
brands are as closely connected to motor racing as TAG Heuer,
which has been involved with fast cars for nearly a century, and
with Formula One for nearly 40 years.
"Each
brand of luxury watch has a unique connection like this -
some may be a jewel brand to an emperor, for instance - we are very
much connected to the field of sports cars, beautiful cars and motor
racing," said Jean- Christophe Babin, president and chief executive
of TAG Heuer. "Motor racing is by far the No. 1 sport
in terms of investment and uniqueness of the brand."
Edouard
Heuer patented the first stopwatch - which measured to one-fifth
of a second - in 1869. In 1911 his company made the first car
dashboard chronograph. In 1916 it created a stopwatch called the
Micrograph, which measured to one-hundredth of a second, and in
1933 it made a dashboard timekeeper for race cars and airplanes.
But
it was in 1969, as a sponsor to Jo Siffert, the Swiss driver,
that it became one of the first nonautomotive sponsors in Formula
One. In 1971 it started an eight-year relationship with Ferrari
as official timekeeper - putting its name on the car and creating
a sophisticated timing system at the team's Fiorano test track.
That
system was a precursor to the computer telemetry that has since
become the standard way of analyzing how to make a racing car
go faster. Ferrari used nearly 50 photocells and timers to analyze
how its cars accelerated, decelerated and cornered on all parts
of the track.
Modern
timing systems have taken a giant step forward from there to attack
one of the most crucial tactical questions in racing - when will
the opposition stop in the pits to refuel and change tires? That
is a key factor in deciding when to make one's own stop.
Pit
stop analysis is now done with optical character recognition and
computers. Teams follow each race ontelevision screens that show
sector-by-sector sub-lap times for all cars on the track. A lap
that takes 90 seconds, for example, may be broken down into three
sectors of perhaps 30 seconds, 45 seconds and 15 seconds.
Teams
now take screen shots of the television image of the sector time
numbers, lap by lap, for rival cars. The snapshots are read by
optical character recognition and converted into data, on the
basis of which computeranalysis calculates acceleration and braking
patterns, likely fuel loads and consumption rates, and consequently
the likely timing of the next pit stop.
"It's
both a science and an art," said one team computer expert,
who asked that he remain nameless. "All the teams do it,
although none are supposed to. It's against the rules."
Back
in the legitimate timekeeping world, TAG Heuer in 2003
expanded its range from Formula One to become official timekeeper
in the Indy Racing League and Indianapolis 500 race in the United
States, where, with small oval tracks and cars that are technologically
very similar to one another, timekeeping is done to one-10,000th
of a second.
"Our
technical team needs new challenges and Indy 500, with the 10,000th
of a second, was really for the whole timing team an incredible
challenge, and also unique," Babin said.
Watch
companies also use Formula One drivers to perform live tests on
their watches.
On
the driver's wrist, on the track in a Formula One car, a watch
is exposed to acceleration forces and vibrations that cannot be
simulated under laboratory conditions.
Felipe
Massa, a Brazilian driver at Ferrari, wears a watch made
by Richard Mille, a Swiss watchmaker who started production in 2000
and considers his brand the Formula One of the watch industry.
The
Richard Mille Tourbillon RM 009, developed with Massa and made
in a limited edition of 25 pieces, aims to be the lightest mechanical
watch ever made.
It
has the world's first aluminum-lithium movement baseplate, a case
in aluminum AS7G-silicium-carbon, and weighs 30 grams, or 1.06
ounces, without the bracelet.
Formula
One has become a mine for watch companies in the development of
new materials.
Formula
One engineers, for instance, are experts in the use of Grade 5
titanium, which they use in accelerator pedals, gearboxes and
parts of the transmission.
"We
saw this material they were using and it looked extremely interesting,
because it's very light, very solid and very high tech,"
said Linder of TAG Heuer. "So that's a material that
we use in certain watches that are also very high tech,
like certain collector's pieces."
It
is used for the case on TAG Heuer's Kirium F1 model, for
instance, since it is much lighter than steel but more scratch-resistant,
and shines like white gold or steel.Carbon fiber, a material used
for the chassis of Formula One cars, has transferred to watch
dials.
The
combination of beauty and technology in both cars and watches
explains why car people are attracted to watches, Linder said,
adding that the objects themselves are very similar.
"In
the watch there's the movement, in the car an engine. There's
a chassis with the car, and that's the watch box. There are instruments
in a car, needle hands as well," he said. "It's also
for people who want the best - in a car or a watch - just
for themselves, they're purists."
For
such people, TAG Heuer created the SLR Chronograph, a special
edition offered only to buyers of the Mercedes- McLaren SLR sports
car.
"Beautiful
cars are what we call expensive toys for grown-up boys - as are
expensive watches," Babin said.
The
car costs €470,000, or $570,000, with the chronograph thrown
in for an additional €10,000. About 35 percent of the car's
buyers have also bought the watch, Babin said.
