RM UP-01 Ferrari
Richard Mille has done it again, pushing the boundaries of what we thought possible in watchmaking. Celebrating their 2021 collaboration, rooted in a shared quest for perfection, Richard Mille and Ferrari have unveiled an extraordinary ultra-flat timepiece: the RM UP-01 Ferrari – a true piece of wearable art.
This model, while breaking from Richard Mille’s established stylistic norms, remains true to the brand’s identity and spirit. The RM UP-01 Ferrari, in 1.75 millimetres, is a triumph of technical prowess, showcasing a new approach to watch mechanics where functionality dictates aesthetics. Years of work, numerous prototypes, and over 6,000 hours of development and testing went into this masterpiece. Richard Mille insisted on traditional architecture, where the movement is assembled within the case, ensuring total shock resistance under any circumstances.
The collaboration with Ferrari shines through in both the materials and the design of the watch, infusing it with a competitive spirit that’s vital for such an ambitious project. The RM UP-01 Ferrari embodies Ferrari’s values, featuring elegant and instantly recognisable sporting mechanisms.
Creating an ultra-flat watch required rethinking traditional movement designs with superimposed gears and hands. Richard Mille distributed the components over a broader surface area, creating a perfect symbiosis between the movement and case, each ensuring the other’s rigidity. The RM UP-01 manual-winding movement, featuring hours, minutes, and a function selector is able to withstand accelerations of over 5,000 g’s, boasts a thickness of 1.18 millimetres, a weight of 2.82 grams, and a power reserve of 45 hours.
To ensure smooth operation of the movement, the baseplate and skeletonized bridges are crafted from grade 5 titanium, ensuring both perfect flatness and robustness. The patented ultra-flat barrel, equipped with an exceptionally fine hairspring, along with a redesigned escapement architecture, further reduces the watch’s overall thickness.
This innovative escapement design, also patented, replaces traditional anti-reversal components with an elongated fork featuring new horns. The variable-inertia balance, made from titanium and adjusted with six weights for precise calibration, supplants the traditional index. The winding mechanism underwent a redesign to eliminate the winding stem, integrating two crowns directly into the case as part of the movement’s mechanics.
The RM UP-01 Ferrari features a titanium case that offers both lightweight durability and water resistance up to 10 meters. Its sapphire crystals, one over the time indicators and another over the regulator, were slimmed down to two-tenths of a millimetre for durability. Achieving such precision and slimness demanded meticulous attention at every machining stage. Crafting the case in-house was the obvious choice for the RM UP-01 Ferrari.
Like the prestigious Italian automotive legend, the 150 limited-edition RM UP-01 Ferrari timepieces combine innovation with performance, strength, and aesthetics.
