Richard Mille has built much of its brand on combining highly sophisticated micromechanical technology with ultra-modern materials from the automobile and aerospace industries, and its latest chronograph-equipped timepiece, the RM 65-01 Automatic Split-Seconds Chronograph, continues the tradition. It is also, the company claims, the “most complex timepiece ever to leave the Richard Mille workshops.”

Some five years in development, and designed by Richard Mille’s engineers in partnership with the movement artisans at Vaucher Manufacture Fleurier (of Parmigiani fame, among other horological plaudits), the new movement inside the RM 65-01 boasts a high-frequency, variable-inertia balance that oscillates at a breakneck pace of 36,600 vph (5 Hz). Its integrated, split-seconds chronograph mechanism is thus endowed with the capacity of ultra-precise stopwatch calculations, to the 1/10th second. Outside of Zenith’s El Primero, few other chronograph calibers can achieve this level of pinpoint accuracy. The movement’s architecture uses six column wheels and vertical coupling. Its mechanical “brain,” seen through the base, stands on a grade 5 titanium chassis, supported by bridges in the same material, and receives energy from a fast-rotating barrel that maintains ideal torque throughout the caliber’s 60-hour power reserve.
Filling the watch’s tank with that power reserve is accomplished via a new and innovative featu...