Design Attributes
- Latitude and Longitude reference Goodwood motor circuit
-
Date code references the Tourist Trophy event
- Dial design takes design ques from the time
- Polished 316L exhibition back displaying wire cut disk from the drive shaft of the 1958 race winning DBR1
Case
- 44mm diameter, brushed 316L stainless steel body
- Match machined, black PVD, 316L stainless steel DSL lugs
- 22mm lug width
- Weight 100g including strap
Main Crown
- Screw lock & sprung diamond knurled & polished 316L stainless steel with triple seal technology
Crystal
- Front: Custom domed box sapphire glass with blue AR coating on the internal surface
- Rear: flat sapphire glass with reverse printed graphic
Movement
- ETA 2824
- 28,800vph
- 25 jewels
- Self-winding ball bearing rotor
- Power reserve ~38 hours
- Water resistance: 10ATM (100m) 100% tested
Dial
- Black enamel dial with gloss white raised markers and 12 O’clock disc
Hands
-
Skeletonised drilled matt white hourand minute hand
- Vintage red sweep hand
Dimensions
- 44mm diameter
- 14.1mm thick
- 22mm lug width
- 49.6mm lug to lug pin spacing
Strap
-
22/20mm Zero West custom military and aerospace grade cross-linked fluoroelastomer rubber. 1 fixed and 1 sliding keeper
-
Reverse sculptured relief
-
Polished 316L stainless steel steel bucklewith etched ZW logo
THE BEST OF TIMES FOR BRITISH MOTORSPORT
The sixth and final round of prestigious Royal Automobile Club Tourist Trophy held in West Sussex was the pinnacle of endurance motor racing and drew entrants from around the world. At 14:00 the Union Jack fell to signal the start of the 4-hour endurance race and the eager drivers dashed Le Mans style to their cars. The Astons were dominant from the start and soon established an unassailable lead up against Porsche, Jaguar D-Type, Lotus and A.C-Bristol to name a few. The race was frantic and saw some accidents and mechanical failures. Multiple pit stops ensued but the David Brown Aston Martins finished 1-2-3, separated by only a few seconds and having covered 148 laps at an average speed of 88.324mph, a full four laps ahead of the fourth placed Porsche.
The winning drivers on that day were Stirling Moss and Tony Brooks. Brooks was born in 1932 and known as the “racing dentist” because as well as racing cars he trained at his father’s dental practice. He competitively raced both sports and F1 cars between 1956 and 1961 driving for Vanwall, BRM, Ferrari and Aston Martin amongst others. Moss was born in 1927 and described by many as “the greatest driver never to win the World Championship”. He drove competitively for ten years between 1951 and 1961 in both sports and F1 cars racing for Mercedes, Maserati, Vanwall, Aston Martin and Lotus to name a few. He notably won the 1955 Italian Mille Miglia 1000-mile road race in a magnesium alloy bodied Mercedes-Benz 300 SLR. That drive was described as the “most iconic single day’s drive in motor racing history”.
The winning Aston in the 1958 TT driven by Moss/Brooks was chassis #2 which was originally designed in 1956 by Ted Cutting and his team. It featured a multi-tubular space frame chassis, advanced front and rear suspension and a lightweight 20-gauge aluminium and magnesium alloy body shell. The shape was sleek and had distinctive vents on the side, a design feature that would become standard on many future Astons. The car was designed primarily for sports and endurance racing and though between 1956 and 1959 had many different engine configurations, the DBR1 would go on to became one of the most icon sports car of all time.
TIME: 13/09/1958 – PLACE: 50.8591°N 0.7530°W
HISTORY IN THE MAKING
THE ICONIC DBR1
Designing and making motorsport watches is part of our DNA so when presented with a glimmer to obtain a genuine piece of legendary British motorsport history, we had to peruse it.
Opportunities like this rarely ever materialise, so when we were offered the chance to own one of the 1958 Aston Martin drive shafts from DBR1/chassis 2, we jumped at it. For those in the know, DBR1/2 is part of motorsport royalty, having won the 1958 TT at Goodwood, driven By Stirling Moss and Tony Brooks. The same car went on to win the 1959 Le Mans 24 hours with Carroll Shelby at the wheel. It has an impeccable heritage and the drive shaft has been in the same family who owned Aston Martin in the 1980’s.
Once in possession of the drive shaft assembly, we then had to present it in a watch back but without altering the external form. To do that would be an engineering challenge so we decided to use EDM wire cutting to remove a core of steel from the centre of the solid shaft. This meant drilling a hole less than 1mm diameter over a length of nearly 250mm and then passing a very fine wire through it to start the EDM process of profile cutting a 22mm diameter core.
We only had one chance of getting this right but the results were perfect and we had our core of precious drive shaft steel. The core was then wire cut into slices, hand finished, waxed and bonded into a machine turned aluminium disk for mounting into TT-58R’s watch back. Finally the precious DBR1 driveshaft is sealed by a custom printed sapphire crystal making it one of the most striking watch backs we have ever made.
ONLY 58 BUILDS