For about the first two years, this website had a page called “Associated Brands”. It served as a catch-all for edge cases that were too compelling to ignore. The original description started out with this: A number of watch brands fall just short of producing officially licensed timepieces, but have made meaningful contributions to Grand …
In a bid to avoid scope creep, I’ve left out a number of compelling white label racing watches from the project’s canon. While these pieces contain an undeniable link to Grand Prix racing entities, they get disqualified due to the apparent absence of a watch brand. That alone would hardly be worth mentioning. On paper, …
What does the use of “F1” or “Formula 1” in a watch’s name actually tell us about its relationship to the sport? It would be tempting to say that different years can produce different answers, but I’ve found that statement can be too simplistic. In 2007, seeing “F1” on the dial meant an official licensing …
What watch brand was the first Official Timekeeper of Grand Prix motorcycle racing? In theory, this should be a fairly straightforward question to answer, and a claim that any brand would be proud to make. Or is it? Because perhaps surprisingly, the answer is anything but clear. While reviewing archive footage of Grand Prix motorcycle …
Building a taxonomy of official watches in Formula 1 and MotoGP can present a surprising number of complications that cause me all sorts of headaches. There is no shortage of cases that can skirt the edge of canon for months on end before a moment of clarity allows me to either lock them in or …
Along a similar vein to Lee Cooper and Footwork Arrows from just a few years earlier, Hugo Boss and West McLaren Mercedes had produced a small blip on the racing watch partnership radar in 1997. By then, the German fashion house was a longtime sponsor of McLaren’s Formula 1 operations, and had just been granted …
I recently learned that in the early to mid-1970s, Old England produced a collection of steering wheel-shaped watches known as Motor-Wrist. The line featured the names and logos of what registered to my modern sensibilities as an impossibly wide range of manufacturers. The huge list included contemporary participants in Formula 1 and Grand Prix motorcycle …
1994 was an unusual year for the Footwork Arrows team. For reasons that I am ill-prepared to explain in detail, the team logo no longer appeared on the Footwork FA15 despite still being recognized as Footwork by the FIA. By appearances alone, it was a Grand Prix car without a name. Something else Footwork Arrows …
Over the span of a year or so, I realized that the Renault F1 Team was an unusually crowded place during the 2005 season when it came to watch partnerships and releases. I had first landed on Chronotech, which was the team’s watch sponsor. Some releases were tied to wins and podiums, which meant that …
Long story short, available documentation points to a small cluster of Honda-branded Casio digital models in the 1980s. I had collectively (and lazily) attributed them all to Honda’s Formula 1 activities during that time, proudly reasoning to myself that they likely coincided with the Japanese manufacturer’s return to the series in 1983. These included “Honda …
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