I Test-Drove Tudor’s New Supercar of a Watch at the Miami Grand Prix

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Formula 1 driver Liam Lawson stumbled into the perfect word to describe Tudor’s new Black Bay Chrono “Carbon 25.”

“Racey,” Lawson said at an event last Friday. “It feels racey on the wrist.”

“It looks like a car,” agreed Isack Hadjar, Lawson’s rookie teammate on the Visa Cash App Racing Bulls. And if there’s one thing these guys are experts on, it’s what does and doesn’t look like a car.

Both drivers were standing at the front of a large, sparse room at the W Hotel in Miami. It was the night before the Miami Grand Prix’s Saturday sprint race, but Lawson and Hadjar were already fully kitted out in team gear with the sleek new—and, yes, very racey—Tudors on their wrists. As we chatted, Lawson occasionally raised his wrist to jangle the watch a bit and stare at its gorgeous white-and-blue dial. Who could blame him?

The “Carbon 25,” which costs $7,575, really does resemble a sexy car—just look at this vintage Porsche 911 Carrera in the same color scheme. The watch’s carbon fiber case is familiar to the drivers as well. Hadjar said that it’s like putting a piece of a car on your wrist. I would soon get comfortable with that feeling.

Isack Hadjar with the new watch

Along with a few other members of the press I was soon led into another vast, mostly empty, poorly lit room. The only decoration was a table in the center with over a dozen watch boxes set up like dinner plates. (I joke a lot about the “Watch Illuminati,” but if it were real, this is exactly how I would picture its meeting rooms.) Nestled in each box, of course, was this supercar of a watch for us to test drive for the weekend. The electric shade of blue—a racey hue, if you will—prompted a question from among our midst.

Breaking the silence in the room—whose occupants were attentively grabbing videos and images of their new wristwear—someone asked if the blue was printed right on the crystal. We all swerved our heads to discover the enquirer was Kevin O’Leary, Shark Tank’s Mr. Wonderful, who has poured a not-insignificant portion of his fortune into a flashy watch collection. Dude is deep in it: Here he was fraternizing with a bunch of the press just to get the earliest possible look at a new Tudor (it is limited-edition, after all). And he’s already started wearing the piece this week on TV.