CAZ101AF.BA0637
I don't quite know what's happened with the release of these new Aryton Senna watches, usually a new special edition TAG Heuer means a barrage of press releases from all the usual suspects (Monochrome Watches, Time & Tide, A Blog to Watch, Hodinkee, etc), but these seem to have just 'appeared' on the TAG Heuer website, did someone forget to tell the marketing department?
Well, maybe somebody got the dates mixed up, I don't know... but anyway what we have here is the latest in a stream (perhaps 'river' might be a little more appropriate) of 'Senna' branded releases from TAG Heuer. Last year around this time we had 25th Anniversary models; the grey dial Calibre 16 Formula 1 with the asymmetrical colouring on the sub-dials, which I wasn't a huge fan of if I'm 100% honest and the £17,000 Carrera Heuer02T Tourbillon, which was nice enough but waaay out of my league!
So a year on and it's time for some new Senna/F1 pieces, and again we have two to choose from; a quartz chronograph and an automatic Calibre 16... but unlike last time, these share more of a unified look. The only slight problem with that look is that it feels a little like Aston Martin parted ways with Red Bull and the dark grey and yellow colour scheme suddenly became 'available'. True, TAG Heuer has produced yellow highlighted 'Senna' watches previously, but I can't help thinking that this watch would not look like this if Aston Martin and TAG Heuer were still planning to work together.
Leaving that aside, these watches actually look pretty nice, particularly the quartz chronograph which is mounted on the Link bracelet once more - a genius move that elevates the Senna Formula 1s above almost all others purely for that reason alone (personally I would love to see a 2016 Red Bull F1 on a Link bracelet, I think that would look incredible!). The watch also has a fixed tachymetre bezel with a ceramic insert, but here is my first niggle. The Senna 'S' is kind of at the 'one and a half minutes to twelve' position, what is that about? Yeah I get they've centred the gap between the 'S' and the 'Senna' text, but it looks a it bonkers. Perhaps as well the bezel is fixed otherwise I'd be constantly trying to straighten it up!
Generally speaking the yellow highlights look great and I really like the yellow 'S' in the 1/10th of a second subdial at the '6' position, but I could have done without the yellow border around the date window, it infringes too much on the chronograph minutes subdial and draws the eye to the one thing on the dial that is not symmetrical. Hmm...
CAF201B.FC6487
Moving on to the Calibre 16 automatic version, we can see the similarities right off the bat... including the same bizarre placing of the Senna 'S' and text on the ceramic bezel insert. For some reason the press release seems to be making a big deal about there being a 400kph marking on the bezel - something about 'celebrating' Senna's highest speed achieved (which was actually 340kph)... maybe something got lost in translation here, but I don't really get it. And last year's watches had exactly the same markings on the bezel anyway, so...?
The other thing you will notice about this Calibre 16 version is that it comes on a new leather strap which has been rather uniquely modelled after the aforementioned Link bracelet (which was an evolution of the S/EL bracelet worn by Senna himself up until the end of 1993). Again the yellow stitching is giving me flashbacks to that Aston Martin Formula 1, but hey... let's not go there, it looks cool so who cares?
I'm not so sure about the actual strap itself though, it's an interesting idea, I'm just not sure if it comes across that well or if it just looks a bit odd. In a way it would have been cool to see a steel 'end link' like Ayrton's S/EL strap had back in the day.. but that's probably pie in the sky at this point! Oh well, hopefully one day I will be able to get a proper look, until then I think I will reserve judgement, but either way I think we should applaud TAG Heuer for trying something new and inventive.
On the whole I think TAG Heuer have come up with a couple of nice additions to the Senna family, but if I'm 100% honest I still think my money would probably be spent on a 2015 CAZ1015.BA0883 quartz chronograph instead given the choice.
Both of these new pieces are available on the TAG Heuer website now.
CAZ101AF.BA0637 43mm Formula 1 Quartz - £1750
CAZ201B.FC6487 44mm Formula 1 Calibre 16 - £2650
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