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, his 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 Friday night, the eve of the Miami Grand Prix’s sprint race, but Lawson was fully kitted out in team gear with the sleek new—and, yes, very racey—Tudor on his wrist. 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.

Oh, and to answer that Wonderful question: the blue is not printed on the dial, but it comes up just enough on the outer track of the face to understand where O’Leary was coming from. The blue is a blistering blue, a shade that just looks like it goes fast.

The new watch on my wrist

The next day, in the beaming Miami sun, I got my first good look at my weekend watch fling. The white is like fresh paint: sparkly rather than flat. Tudor increased the watch’s size to 42 mm (from 41 mm on the regular BB chrono), but because of the light carbon fiber case it doesn’t wear huge. In fact, I keep trying on watches that convince me bigger might be better, especially after all the hysteria around tiny vintage pieces these past couple of years (maybe more on that another day).

As a foremost expert on Formula 1 (i.e. I binged most of the latest Drive to Survive season on Netflix last week), I can state with confidence that I know precisely what Tudor is up to. These days, you’re simply not a proper watch brand without ties to F1. Race weekends can sometimes feel like watch events where they also race cars. Formula 1’s new title sponsor TAG Heuer, who just took over for Rolex, has its logo splashed all over the raceway. Richard Mille sponsors both Ferrari and McLaren, Alpine has a partnership with H. Moser, IWC is with Mercedes AMG-Petronas, and TAG Heuer also has a team with Red Bull, which means it gets plenty of time on the wrist of the era’s most dominant racer, Max Verstappen. (Side note: In Miami, the upcoming F1 movie starring Brad Pitt had its own pop-up experience in the super-VIP area, which I was desperate to get into because Jimmy Butler’s Bigface coffee was slinging cortados down there. I did not succeed. Ball up top.)

Despite its recent inroads into racing, however, Tudor remains a diving brand first and foremost. The Black Bay and Pelagos were made explicitly for exploring the depths—and some of my GQ colleagues have even gone scuba diving while wearing the brand’s pieces. But in 2025, the brand is committed to its Black Bay Chronograph. The stopwatch complication has deep racing ties, so a partnership with Red Bull’s little sister brand is an obvious way to cement legitimacy in the sport. Until now, Tudor has mostly limited its F1-related pieces to special editions made exclusively for drivers. Last year’s ceramic Black Bay with its deep black case and contrasting blue dial was especially cool, and there were two additional versions made for the Miami and Las Vegas races.

You can see how the brand is ramping up desire for its racing-themed pieces. Last year’s were completely off limits, while the new carbon piece is one of Tudor’s rare numbered and limited editions (there will be 2025 in total).

The racing-adjacent chronograph is also where Tudor likes to have the most fun. For diving, the brand is still pushing serious tool watches: Its flagship release at Watches and Wonders was a 43-mm Pelagos Ultra, made to dive to 1,000 meters underwater. Meanwhile, Tudor’s put out chronographs with vivid pink and blue dials before this latest racey one debuted this weekend. And just a few days after the release of the carbon watch, Tudor put out a variant of its Pelagos FXD Chrono with bright pink accents.

Just because they’re fun doesn’t mean they’re not useful, though. During the main race on Sunday, Tudor arranged a group of us to go down into VCARB’s garage, where the team’s mechanics observe the event between their racers’ pit stops. One of the mechanics came near our group to pull a protein bar out of a small pouch of snacks—because the cars aren’t the only things that need to fuel up. On his wrist? The aforementioned Tudor Black Bay made exclusively for the team. I looked down at my own carbon Black Bay Chrono with a warm thought: It’s racey.

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