Richard Mille launches the RM 056 Felipe Massa Sapphire

sapphire glass Watch view
The new RM 056 Felipe Massa Sapphire - available in a limited edition of five - has a case made entirely of scratch-resistant sapphire glass
(Image credit: Richard Mille)

There's a clear symbiosis between sport and watches, precision timing being the hook upon which both depend. There are some pretty nifty designs delivered by the sports watch sector each year too. So far, though, nothing beats Richard Mille's spectacular 2012 offering - the Tourbillon Split Seconds Competition Chronograph RM 056 Felipe Massa Sapphire - a watch with a case of pure glass, cut and milled from solid blocks of sapphire. It looks futuristic and it is: in terms of engineering, it's a watchmaking first.

But then Mille is naturally adept at seamlessly combining - and propelling - both the technological and design facets of watchmaking. His pieces are not only worn by his ambassadors but used by them, while achieving spectacular sporting feats.

Check out Rafael Nadal's wrist the next time you watch him play tennis - most sport watch ambassadors wear theirs before and after games, lest anything hamper performance, yet Nadal's Mille-designed watch is so remarkably light that he wears it during play. The mechanical inner workings of the watch are so complex and cleverly arrived at that they, in turn, are engineered to stand the heat.

It's the same with Felipe Massa - aficionados will know that Mille and Massa, the Brazilian Formula 1 driver from which the eponymous new watch takes its name, have long been buddies: Masa was wearing his specially designed Richard Mille watch during his almost fatal crash at the Hungarian Grand Prix in 2009. The driver was airlifted to hospital. His watch kept ticking. Luckily, so did he.

Watch interior parts

The movement of the lightweight watch has been reduced by 20%, a feat that required using 400 new parts

(Image credit: Richard Mille)

sapphire glass Watch view

With its seriously savvy stopwatch functions, users of the RM 056 Felipe Massa Sapphire can stop the split seconds hand in order to read an intermediate time while the main chronograph timer is already moving

(Image credit: Richard Mille)

Watch interior parts

The baseplate of the RM 056 Felipe Massa Sapphire has been finished in grade five titanium, a material frequently used in the aerospace, aeronautical and automobile industries

(Image credit: Richard Mille)

Caragh McKay has been a contributing editor at Wallpaper* since 2014. She was previously watches & jewellery director and is currently our resident lifestyle & shopping editor. Caragh has produced exhibitions and created and edited titles for publishers including the Daily Telegraph. She regularly chairs talks for luxury houses, Van Cleef & Arpels and Cartier among them. Caragh’s current remit is cross-cultural and her recent stories include the curious tale of how Muhammad Ali met his poetic match in Robert Burns and how a Martin Scorsese film revived a forgotten Osage art.