Not to be outdone, the team’s timing partner IWC today pulls the wraps off two new watch models honouring rising star George Russell, the British driver who became the golden boy of Mercedes-AMG Petronas following Lewis Hamilton’s move to Ferrari last year.
Russell (who turns 28 on February 15) has raced for Mercedes since making his rookie F1 debut with the team in 2019, arriving six years after IWC was announced as ‘official engineering partner’, since when he’s been involved in the creation of several special watches, not least a decidedly cool one-off he was seen wearing last spring.
Made especially for him, the Ingenieur Automatic 42 combined a black ceramic case with a grid-pattern dial in the eye-catching ‘Petronas blue’ that’s used on the team cars and dominates the driver’s Bell racing helmet.
Although the ‘full blue’ dial hasn’t been made available to the public (yet), the colour was used on the markings and straps of last year’s titanium-cased Mercedes-AMG Petronas watches as well as on the 100-piece, Chf 95,000 Big Pilot Shock Absorber XPL edition dedicated to team principal Toto Wolff (whose personal version of the model sold for a below-par Chf 85,000 at a charity auction last October).
The two new Russell limited editions once again adopt the blue hue for both dial markings and their quick-change rubber straps, but this time cases are made from ultra scratch-resistant black ceramic.
The first piece is based on the simple, 41mm Pilot’s Watch Automatic and retains the standard model’s soft iron ‘Faraday cage’ for maximum protection against magnetism, central hacking seconds and screw-down crown.
The second Russell special is based on the Pilot’s Watch Chronograph 41 (which is nearer 42mm in diameter) and, again, gets a rubber strap and dial highlights in Petronas blue for a striking contrast with the black dial and blackened case.
Inside, you’ll find IWC’s regular 69380 calibre with 46 hours of power reserve and automatic winding.
Both watches, meanwhile, carry Russell’s ‘63’ race number on the case backs, together with the relevant edition number out of the 1,063 examples of each model being released.
There’s no denying the black and Petronas blue combination works really well, and the watches arrive at the start of a season in which Russell is widely predicted to shine.
Following the most comprehensive regulation overhaul in F1 history, the now 50-50 electric/combustion engined cars are certainly something of an unknown quantity.
But with Russell having proved himself a consistent title contender since 2021 and finishing the 2025 season in a strong fourth place, many pundits are forecasting a battle for outright victory this year between him and Red Bull Racing’s four-times world champion Max Verstappen.
And if Russell does clinch it, we can no doubt expect to close 2026 with an even more special IWC limited edition……
*** IWC Schaffhausen, Pilot’s Watch Chronograph 41 George Russell (Ref. IW389411), CHF 10’500
IWC Schaffhausen, Pilot’s Watch Automatic 41 George Russell (Ref. IW328107), CHF 7’800
