Formula 1 special editions are a reliable fixture of the watch calendar, and IWC has more claim to the genre than most: its partnership with the Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS team runs well past a decade, and its links to Mercedes-Benz go back further still. What is slightly less common is a watch dedicated to the team rather than to one of its drivers. The new Pilot's Watch Chronograph 41 Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS Formula One Team, reference IW388121, is exactly that, and as Monochrome points out, it follows the first official team watch, the 2022 IW388108, into the collection.
Purple, and a lot of it
The reason to notice this one is the colour. IWC has dressed the 41mm Pilot's Chronograph in a purple sunburst dial, a shade the brand has not used often, and offset it with the now-familiar PETRONAS teal-green on the markers, numerals and Super-LumiNova. The blacked-out hands carry the same green luminous tone, the subdials are recessed and finished with a snailed pattern, and the framed day-date window at three shows a black disc with the teal-green digits. It is a lot of dial to take in, and the brand's own images lean into low light, which drew a fair comment or two about how hard the purple is to read on screen. In the metal, under a convex double-sided anti-reflective sapphire, it is a more restrained object than the renders suggest.
Titanium, and a strap you can swap
The case measures the standard 41mm across and 14.5mm tall, and it is made from grade 5 titanium, brushed with polished accents, with a screw-in crown and 100m of water resistance. IWC fits it to a purple rubber strap on a titanium pin buckle, with the tool-free EasX-Change system underneath, so the strap comes off without a spring-bar tool if the purple proves too much for a given wrist.
The in-house movement
Behind the dial is IWC's own calibre 69385, an automatic chronograph built on a column wheel rather than a cam, running at 28,800 vibrations per hour with a 46-hour power reserve and hacking seconds. It drives the hour, minute and seconds counters of the chronograph and is finished with circular Côtes de Genève, polished screws and an openworked rotor with circular graining, all visible through the sapphire back. The caseback glass carries PETRONAS-green printing on its underside, a reminder of the partnership that you only see when the watch is off the wrist.
No limit, a fixed price
The detail that separates this from the usual race-week edition is what IWC has not done. There is no edition number and no cap: the IW388121 joins the permanent collection, available for as long as IWC chooses to make it, at CHF 7,700. For a titanium in-house chronograph that reads as a limited piece, being able to simply order one is the quiet surprise. Whether the purple ages as a bold choice or a period one, buyers will get to decide on their own timeline rather than the calendar's.
