As Official Timekeeper of Formula 1 and partner of the Oracle Red Bull Racing Team, TAG Heuer was facing high expectations to bring some high-octane timekeeping to the track this year. Surprisingly, the brand meets the challenge not with a chronograph, but with an auto-inspired take on the jumping hour complication. The Monaco Speed 12 combines race-track aesthetics with a new movement that collectors of Louis Vuitton might find familiar. The new watch debuts at the Formula 1 Louis Vuitton Grand Prix de Monaco 2026 this weekend.
The TAG Heuer Monaco Speed 12 is an auto-centric take on the jumping hour.
TAG Heuer
TAG Heuer Teamed up with fellow LVMH company La Fabrique du Temps Louis Vuitton, a complication movement workshop, to develop a race-track take on the Louis Vuitton Spin Time movement, first introduced in 2009. The Spin Time, you will remember, employs 12 rotating satellite cubes to tell the time, which Louis Vuitton went on to decorate in several colorful renditions over the years. (Apparently the idea came to Michel Navas, master watchmaker for La Fabrique du Temps Louis Vuitton, while watching the departure board at an airport.) The mechanism is also often referred to as wandering minutes.
