CAZ101U.BA0843
The first two Max Verstappen Formula 1 models were at once 'under-the-radar' and seemingly a 'hot ticket', I've never seen either of them, probably because they never reached the stores... selling out before they were even released (I presume), and so here we are in 2018, with Max's F1 career going from strength to strength and almost everyone predicting that this guy will be a World Champion one day (though whether that comes with Red Bull or not is harder to predict), and here we have the third Max Verstappen watch.
The first watch celebrated the fact that Max was the youngest driver to ever drive in a Formula 1 race, the second his first Grand Prix victory and this one... well, nothing so specific. As yet, despite winning five races, Max is yet to get himself a pole position, so even that is off the table - for now, maybe next year's watch will celebrate that particular feat?
That remains to be seen, but what of this 2018 model? Well, I have to say, unfortunately that I think it's the least appealing of the three watches so far. The first two watches came on coloured rubber straps (orange for the first watch and red for the second) which made total sense when viewed in conjuction with two very colourful watches. I really don't understand why they thought it was a good idea to go with the dressier steel and ceramic bracelet this time, it doesn't seem to work with the dial very well in my opinion.
I'm not a big fan of the red, there seems to be just too much of it really... and it's not even a particularly nice red. Also it would be interesting to see how well the red on the bezel and dial matches with the red hands, because while the coloured markers resemble the pinky-red of the Red Bull Racing team, I'm guessing those red hands are straight off the F1 Senna. That might look a bit jarring in the flesh...
I don't have a problem with the '33' logo so much, I just wish it was done in a subtler way, a white outline would probably look better than that big splodge of red, and then there's that awful stripe. I hate it. I absolutely hate it. It looks ridiculous, I never liked it on the James Hunt Formula 1, but this looks even worse. I hate the way it gets in the way of other details on the dial (the date window, the '1' hour marker and the text at the '6' position) in fact any reservations I may have about the rest of the watch pale into insignificance against this awful, awful stripe. Take the stripe away and you have a watch that I could live with, I don't think I could 'love' it, but I could live with it and might even come to like it...
No stripe - so much better!
But as it is... well admittedly in this wrist shot it looks kinda 'okay'... but that stripe still looks all kind of wrong. If they'd made it (a lot) thicker I think it would have worked better, but really, they should have just gone with my version instead.
Other than that it seems reasonable to assume this will wear well on the wrist, being the same 43mm case as that used in the 'Aston Martin' Special Edition and countless other Formula 1's. I haven't seen a photograph of the entire bracelet as yet, it will be interesting to see what kind of clasp this watch has, I hope it has a nice one, but I fear it might have a tacky pressed steel clasp which at this price is a tad out of order.
So there we have it, I wonder if I'll actually get to see one of these or if the entire run of 1300 will be sold out before they reach the stores again? These are priced at £1850, and I can't help but think that a lot of these will be bought and stored, unworn, for the day when Max inevitably becomes an F1 Champion. What price a complete and unworn 'set' appearing at auction within five years?
No comments:
Post a Comment