Large, and loud about racing
By Julien Moreau, Geneva ยท
Forty-four and a quarter millimetres. I wrote that number down and stared at it for some time.
The Speedmaster was born in 1957 as a sports chronograph for drivers, before the Moon took over the story, so a Racing version is perfectly legitimate history. This one carries the racing-style minute track around a black dial, a date, the automatic 9900 co-axial with 60 hours behind an open back, and a case 14.9 mm thick on a steel bracelet. Fifty metres.
For those who want an automatic Speedmaster, and I understand the appeal of not winding a chronograph every morning, it does the job, and at eighty-three to eighty-eight hundred dollars it is only a little more than the Moonwatch. But it is a big, tall watch, and it has lost the slenderness that made the Speedmaster beautiful. Large wrists only, and preferably large wrists that own a car worth timing.