Breitling Top Time B01 Racing Limited Edition Watch Review
The Breitling Top Time B01 Racing Limited Edition is offered in three colourways, each limited to 750 pieces. The bold styling and retro-inspired aesthetics proffer much eye-appeal. Mark McArthur-Christie, the vintage-loving chrono fiend, explores the specification of this latest timing instrument in his own imitable style.
Watches – it’s a matter of size
Who’d be a watch designer? Apart from the significant coffee habit and getting caught peering at people’s wrists at parties, you’re constantly aiming at a moving target. A few years ago it was all about B-I-G. Watches were bulking up to resemble tins of boot polish and horophiles were struggling to get planning permission for their watch boxes. Now, thankfully, sanity has started to return and the only place you’ll find a 73 mm case is your local supermarket’s tinned fish section.
Smaller, more sensibly-sized watches have been making a comeback for a while, but the Incredible Shrinking Watch brings its own challenges. You don’t have to be a genius to put together a legible chronograph when a dial is the size of a town hall clock. Creating a chronograph with a sub-40 mm waistline, making everything work together and still offering visual appeal, is a damn sight more challenging.
Breitling Top Time B01 Racing Limited Edition – three colourways
This makes it all the more interesting to see Breitling’s new Top Time Racing chronos. There are three of them: a black and white model with a tan leather strap, a green and white option with a matching green leather strap and a cool-kid Martini version with a dark blue, light blue and red striped dial paired with a dark blue leather strap. Each reference is limited to 750 pieces (Breitling neatly avoids having to individually number the casebacks by engraving each “One of 750”) and, best of all, they’re all 38 mm in diameter. All you need is a Daks suit and you’d be back in 1964 again.
Perhaps the surprising thing is how individual each watch feels. The black and white is very much a timing instrument. There’s everything you need here and nothing you don’t; all high-contrast, understatement and no fuss. The tan leather stops things appearing too austere, but it’d be interesting to pair it with a black Breitling strap just to see if the full-on binary colour approach actually works. The green dial/green strap combination feels as though you should be reaching for the keys to your bright orange Marcos GT and parking on the pavement outside Biba. This is most definitely a good thing.
There’s always a challenge with racing liveries or logos on a watch. Whether it’s Martini or Gulf or Rosso Corsa, it can easily be a bit much. Here, Breitling has hit just the right tone. Five lines does the job – four blue and one red – with no logo to shout and make it too loud. You instantly know they’re the Martini colours but they don’t get in the way of the watch’s function or design.
Breitling Top Time B01 Racing Limited Edition – dial
The new Top Time’s design is deceptively simple; a running quarter seconds at 9, a 30-minute chrono counter at 3, chrono central seconds (always welcome – much easier to see than a subdial), hours and minutes. But look closer and there’s been a lot of thought put into the dialside detail.
For a start, the Martini and green watches both pick out their hour markers with a tiny dot of red. Then there’s the neat way the chrono functions are dressed in the same colour, aiding readability. The squircular (it should be a word, certainly in this context) snailing gracing the subdials also makes them even easier to read.
The chronograph is incredibly simple to use even though it only records up to 30 minutes. It’s not often a chronograph with a tachymeter scale is this easy to read, especially for those of us whose constant refrain seems to be ‘have you seen my glasses?’ The box glass sapphire (coated on both sides) helps to get light onto the dial and to leave the edges clear. The tachymeter scale is presented in a contrasting hue which also aids readability.
Breitling Top Time B01 Racing Limited Edition – case
The stainless steel 38 mm case has been cleverly designed to optimise almost every millimetre to give the dial as much space as possible. The sharply tapering bezel runs right to the case sides, leaving only the corners visible. The striations at each corner could have ended up being fussy but again, the Grenchen Manufacture has used them in a way that focuses your eye inwards to the dial, just as they did on the original 1960s models. They’ll be quite the challenge for case refinishers in years to come, mind.
Although there’s plenty of new design here to like, there’s still enough of the original ‘60s watch to gladden the Breitling faithful. For example, there’s the ref. 2211 dashboard layout with ‘squircle’ subdials and those case striations are from the ref. 2008. We’re thanking the watchgods that the ref. 2000 horizontal hour batons (that were picked up by Heuer for the Monaco with rather more success) were avoided as they never really worked with the Top Time’s round dial. You’ll not find square pushers either, perhaps because they’re harder to make water-resistant and the new Top Times are fine to 100 m. The view in the 1960s was if your driving chronograph was wet enough to let in water, you probably had bigger problems than knowing your laptime. All this said, a ‘60s style large-holed Rallye bracelet would have been a cool strap option.
Breitling Manufacture Caliber 01
Behind the closed caseback is the B01 chronograph movement. This features in the firm’s Navitimers in its triple register configuration and has been around since 2009, so it’s a sound choice. It’s also a very different animal from the Valjoux 7734 that powered the 1960s Top Times. For a start, it’s a column wheel and vertical clutch pairing rather than a coulisse movement so full bragging (and watchmaking) points for that. It’s also running at 28,800 vph (4 Hz) rather than 18,000 vph of yesteryear. In fact, comparing them is unfair – a little like a comparison between that Marcos GT mentioned earlier and a modern Alpine A110.
Breitling Top Time B01 Racing Limited Edition – closing remarks
There’s competition at this end of the market, particularly from TAG Heuer’s glassbox Carreras, but even though they do a similar job, they’re very different watches with different characters. There’s plenty of room in a watchbox for both.
“The Top Time collection is known for its bold chronographs,” says Breitling’s CEO Georges Kern. “With these latest limited editions, we put a modern spin on classic 1960s designs, returning this watch to what it’s all about: timing races and measuring speed.”
With speed seemingly a dirty word in today’s over-controlled, over-legislated and risk-managed-to-the-nth world, it’s good to see Breitling making a watch that so directly reminds one of happier, freer and less constrained days.
Further reading
Technical specifications
- Model: Breitling Top Time B01 Racing Limited Edition
- References: AB01771A1B1X1 (black), AB01771A1L1X1 (green), AB01772A1G1X1 (Martini – blue)
- Case: stainless steel, diameter 38 mm, height 13.3 mm, water resistant to 10 bar (100 metres); sapphire crystal to front and solid caseback.
- Functions: hours, minutes, small seconds, chronograph
- Movement: Breitling Manufacture Caliber B01, self-winding movement, frequency 28,800 vph (4 Hz), power reserve approximately 70 hours.
- Strap: colour coordinating calfskin leather strap paired with a steel folding clasp
- Price: £5,950 (RRP as of 20.5.2025)