RM 65-01 Automatic Split-Seconds Chronograph

The RM 65-01 runs at 5Hz, twice the rate of a conventional automatic, which lets the chronograph resolve to a tenth of a second. The calibre carries over six hundred components and remains the most complicated movement the manufacture has produced.

The split-seconds function is the reason for the count. Two chronograph hands run together, one can be stopped to record a split time and then caught up instantly to the running hand. Executing that at 5Hz, automatically wound, is genuinely difficult.

There is a pusher at nine that winds the barrel rapidly, delivering roughly a full wind in a few dozen presses. It exists because the chronograph consumes power and Richard Mille did not want owners hand-winding a watch this size.

The white ceramic case is sintered zirconium oxide, harder than steel and effectively scratch-proof, machined against a carbon TPT caseband. The colour is why this configuration is the one collectors ask for by name.

Everything on this dial is functional, including the colour coding, which is how a racing instrument is supposed to work.