Here’s What’s Driving the Watch Industry’s Formula 1 Mania

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The hottest ticket in luxury watchmaking isn’t a tennis match, a golf game, a gala dinner, or a fancy cruise. It’s a weekend at Formula 1, complete with Paddock Club VIP passes, driver meet-and-greets, and heaps of automotive swag.

I speak from recent experience. From May 2-5, I spent three days in Miami with Tudor, which celebrated its 1-year-old sponsorship deal with the Visa Cash App Racing Bulls F1 team (the one with the eye-catching pink livery) by flying 13 journalists from around the world to the Magic City. Our mission? To test-drive a new watch during the fourth edition of the Miami Grand Prix. The race, which concluded May 4 with McLaren driver Oscar Piastri claiming victory, marked the brand’s first major F1 activation.

The new watch, the Black Bay Chrono “Carbon 25,” lived up to the occasion. Tudor’s first-ever limited-edition timepiece, the wristwatch, which comes in 2,025 examples, is also, at $7,575, its priciest. Housed in a 42 mm full carbon fiber case, the COSC-certified chronograph features a “racing white” dial with a distinct blue ring. “It feels racy on the wrist, and it looks racy, too,” Liam Lawson, one of Visa Cash App’s two drivers, said during a Tudor event in South Beach where he and his fellow driver, Isack Hadjar, flashed their numbered Carbon 25 models as they posed for photos with journalists.

Like TAG Heuer, IWC and the other Swiss brands jockeying for F1 supremacy, Tudor is tapping into F1’s growing profile in America. Since the Miami and Las Vegas Grands Prix debuted in 2022 and 2023, respectively, the sport’s American fanbase has swelled, fueled by a new demographic of fans, including young people and women, who’ve been seduced by the drama, not to mention the cast, of Netflix’s seven-season-long Formula 1: Drive to Survive documentary series.

F1’s ultra-competitive landscape also has boosted viewership. “Right now, McLaren is the quickest team, yet it faces regular pressure from Red Bull, Ferrari, and even Mercedes,” Luke Smith, The Athletic’s senior writer covering Formula 1, recently told The New York Times. “It’s impossible to say right now which driver is going to win the world championship. Off track, the TV numbers in the United States, while modest compared to other sports, have been up through the early part of the season. The sport is attracting more sponsors than ever, which means teams are earning more money than ever.”

I can vouch for that. In 2014, I attended my first F1 Grand Prix, in Monaco, as a guest of Rolex, Tudor’s parent company, then in its second year as F1’s official timekeeping sponsor. The brand’s distinctive green banners bearing its yellow coronet logo dominated seemingly every inch of the circuit. There was no question which company topped the F1 sponsorship leaderboard.

As of 2025, however, Rolex is no longer affiliated with the world’s most prestigious motor racing championship. Depending on whom you believe, the Crown either lost or surrendered the sponsorship to TAG Heuer, which used the occasion of the Miami Grand Prix to introduce the new Formula 1 Solargraph Miami GP Limited Edition, part of the Formula 1 Collection the brand debuted earlier this year. Featuring a black opaline dial and black DLC-coated steel case, the watch is the first of seven forthcoming limited releases tied to global Grands Prix due to roll out this year.

Rolex’s absence wasn’t the only reason this year felt different. The explosion in F1 sponsorships, and the increased competition for eyeballs, has resulted in a battle for signage space that’s diluted the impact any one brand can make at the event. In Miami, Crypto.com ads crowded out banners touting Aramco, Heineken, LVMH, and F1’s other global partners.

That may explain why IWC, another F1 stalwart, opted for a different marketing approach. The brand showed off its F1 ties with a series of celeb-focused events during race weekend that focused on Apple TV’s forthcoming F1 movie. Due out in June, the film stars Brad Pitt as Sonny Hayes, a fictional F1 driver who wears a prop watch based on the Ingenieur SL Reference 1832 (which Pitt designed in a three-way collaboration with IWC and Cloister Watch Company, a design studio in New York City). 

These aren’t the watch world’s only F1 tie-ups. Richard Mille has long sponsored McLaren and Ferrari (in Miami, Piastri reportedly wore a RM67-02 model customized with McLaren’s orange palette). Girard-Perregaux is a sponsor of Aston Martin and H. Moser & Cie. works with Alpine Motorsports. Watchmakers have aligned themselves with motorsports for the better part of the past 50 years, but never as intensely as they do now. To understand why, I simply picture my 13-year-old niece, who watched Saturday’s F1 sprint race on her phone in between games at her soccer tournament. 

Credit: robbreport.com