For Rafael Nadal, 2013 was an incredible year with ten tennis championship titles, including his eighth consecutive title in Roland Garros. Relegated to fifth place after an injury kept him away from the courts for several months, Nadal made a spectacular comeback, retaking the world No. 1 placement in the ATP rankings within the year.
The RM 35-01 Rafael Nadal houses the new RMUL3 caliber. It used offers exceptional impact resistance thanks to the use of grade 5 titanium throughout the highly skeletonized movement design, combined with black PVD surface treatment. Richard Mille Watches in Les Breuleux extensively tested the RMUL3 caliber under severe conditions, with extreme shocks applied to the movement exceeding 5000 G’s.
The skeletonised manual winding caliber RMUL3 with its Swiss anchor escapement uses 24 jewels and a free sprung balance beating at a frequency of 4 Hz. With a power reserve of 55 hours provided by a double barrel system, this movement only weighs a mere 4 grams.
The movement is mounted within a unique case created from NTPT® carbon. This high-tech material consists of multiple layers of woven carbon filaments with an average thickness of 30 microns, stacked with a change of fiber orientation equaling 45° between every 2 successive layers. Not only does this make each case exceptionally rigid in every direction; it also means that on a visual level every timepiece is totally unique, closely resembling the surface of finely crafted Damascene steel, due to the complex and aleatoric carbon structures that are slowly revealed during the processes of milling and finishing.
