Kazuki Nakajima

Aside from rudimentary embellishments such as his emblazoned signature and logo, this all black number also features a chockfull of thoughtful personalized details such as the red and white second hand that recalls the colors of his home country, Japan, and the openings in the dial fashioned after the breathing slits in his helmet.

Matched in power by its automatic Oris 635 movement, the timepiece also bears a layered, two-piece black dial with printed indexes and a date and day display at ‘3′ for an athletic overlay. Clad in a dark, menacing shell, the Diamond-Like Carbon (DLC) coated stainless steel piece screams with sporty elements such as its F1 tyre imprinted rubber strap and the highlighted ‘8′ numeral on the minute scale (Kazuki’s number).

Limited to 1,088 pieces, this robust number is not for the faint-hearted. And in case you want to hit the sea after the tracks, this watch is water resistant up to 100m.

And where many other sports offerings limit themselves to the ubiquitous chronograph function, Armand Nicolet proves that elegant complications and athleticism don’t make strange bedfellows. The SOS’s four variants – day and date, complete calendar, chronograph as well as chronograph with complete calendar – trumpet the brand’s everyday ethos brilliantly.

For those after gutsy chic, a rousing DLC-coated titanium get-up teems with lethal dynamism (Read Raven Maven Rushes). Water resistant to 200m, it comes in a choice of black, black and grey or silvered dials with rubber, calf or alligator strap.

Steve McQuee

Forty years after its birth as the world’s first square-cased water resistant sports watch, and deified a year later, thanks to Steve McQueen who famously strapped it on during the set of his 1970 movie smash, Le Mans, TAG Heuer’s Monaco remains an icon for fans of sport watches, with the ability to turn perfectly coherent gentlemen into squealing school boys with each new roll-out.

This year, the brand has gone the whole nine yards to celebrate its 40th birthday. There is an ultra-robust concept watch, the Monaco Twenty Four (read about it in Lab Dance), an all-white beauty for the lasses (see Dame Game), and two limited editions – the Calibre 12 Chronograph and the Automatic Calibre 11 Chronograph which are the subjects of our affection in this review.

First up is the Calibre 12 Chronograph, a 5,000 piece limited edition collection forged out of an alliance with motor-racing titan, Gulf Oil (hence its nickname Gulf Limited Edition). Breaking out with a spanking new anti-reflective sapphire crystal that wraps around the front and back, the watch is given a fresh breath of air with a powerful new movement, Calibre 12, derived from a Dubois Depraz 2008 module.

Automatic Calibre 11 Chronograph

Upsized to 39mm for contemporary flair, the watch takes further design cues from McQueen’s Porsche Gulf 916K, seen in the Le Mans movie, with a grey meteor dial bearing its signature orange and blue racing stripes and a ‘Gulf’ logo imprinted on the dial.

Jack Heuer

But if you ask us, it is the Automatic Calibre 11 Chronograph that truly sets our hearts racing. A 1,000-piece limited re-edition straight out of horological back pages, the watch spells vintage cool from the word go – brushed steel case, blue dial with red accents and a left hand crown that mimics its original 1969 styling. In fact, we’ll go even further to say that it will be a hot auction piece, thanks to the stamp of the original ‘Heuer’ logo on its dial.

Further fuelling its collector’s cachet is its case back bearing the signature of TAG Heuer’s honorary chairman, Jack Heuer, and special box set that includes a second blue alligator strap as well as a Steve McQueen commemorative tome. Life truly begins at 40.

Befitting the intrinsic dynamism of this new sports offering is the exclusive automatic DR1306 calibre. Endowed with what the marque terms as a “Chrono Sprint” function, its chronograph display is scaled down to a single counter (as opposed to the more common double or triple counters) that features two numeral tracks, one for the hours and another for the minutes for easy readability. Upping the ante is a single pusher at ‘7′ that controls the chronograph’s start, stop and reset modes. Elsewhere, with a 41 x 44mm case crafted out of steel and coated with a proprietary Black Tich titanium carbide compound that enhances the watch’s corrosion resistance, the Endurer certainly lives up to its name. Available with black rubber strap and water resistant to 100m.