Richard Mille Sets New Records for Lightness and Resistance with the RM 27-05 Flying Tourbillon Rafael Nadal

Swiss watch manufacturer Richard Mille had been in business for less than a decade when an extraordinary partnership opportunity with promising Spanish tennis pro Rafael Nadal arose.  “I still remember the day in 2008 when Richard contacted me to discuss working together. It was unthinkable for me, as I’d never worn anything on my wrist,” Nadal recalls. “It all came together in 2010, when he came to visit me in Mallorca. As a joke, he first presented me with a very heavy platinum watch. When I reacted as you might expect, he quickly held up a prototype of the RM 027, a surprisingly light watch with spectacular lines,” Nadal says.

Since that early encounter, Richard Mille has adorned Nadal’s right wrist with some of the brand’s most boundary-pushing creations, a line of tourbillon watches that are suitably light and strong to survive the Spaniard’s lethal backhand on the court. Year after year, Nadal has seized one victory after another with Richard Mille watches on his wrist, and the manufacturer has been pushed to ever greater achievements in watchmaking in order to meet Nadal’s needs.

With the new RM 27-05 Flying Tourbillon Rafael Nadal, the saga comes to its conclusion. This sixth and final tourbillon made for Nadal, a limited edition of 80 pieces, weighs a mere 11.5 grams (without the strap), and it can withstand a g-force of 14,000. Those two superlatives make it the lightest and most resistant manual-winding tourbillon watch ever. A major contributor to these achievements is the use of a new composite for the case, Carbon TPT®B.4, which is 4% denser and 30% stronger than the previous version of the material. Additionally, there are no screws holding the movement inside its case; the entire caliber rests inside the monobloc case, which is then sealed from the top by the flange and bezel. Technical progress and a new eye on aesthetics have pushed Richard Mille’s watchmakers to new heights.