Girard-Perregaux Laureato Skeleton WinteRace Edition Watch Review
The Girard-Perregaux Laureato Skeleton WinteRace Edition has recently gone on sale. Created to coincide with the annual historic car event, WinteRace Cortina, the watch features an open-worked dial, incorporating golden accents, and is housed in a ceramic case. Mark McArthur-Christie talks about regularity before exploring this latest creation from the Swiss Manufacture.
Horophiles and petrolheads
There is something about car people and watch people that makes a Venn diagram look more like a circle. Sure, as strange as it is, some car people aren’t bothered by watches and some watch people prefer to hop on a bicycle, but the significant overlap is there all the same. This is splendid news for watch companies, who get to release interesting things using the excuse of a car event, and for the petrolheads who get to buy them or maybe even win them.
Girard-Perregaux & WinteRace Cortina
Since 2017, Girard-Perregaux has sponsored WinteRace, a 460 km classic car event starting from Cortina and driving through the Venetian and Trentino Alps. On the route, you’ll see everything from 70s Porsche 911s to Lancia Fulvias and Austin Healeys hammering through cobbled villages and along snowbank-skirted Alpine roads. Think Mille Miglia but with wooly hats.
Both sexes are usually well-represented, with several women enjoying success over the years. Notable examples include Annamaria Covelli, competing in her Porsche 356, and Anna Gualandi in her Lancia. The members of the winning team are awarded a Girard Perregaux Laureato, a watch known for precision; an essential requirement for regularity race success.
Girard-Perregaux Laureato since 1975
Launched in 1975 as the ‘Quartz Chronometer’, the inaugural Laureato featured a movement with a frequency of 32,768 Hz. This frequency was set by Girard-Perregaux and has since become the industry standard for quartz movements. However, in Italy, the most important market for Girard-Perregaux at the time of launch, the model soon became known among the cognoscenti as the ‘graduate (Laureato in Italian) of the school of Girard-Perregaux’. This affectionate name served as an acknowledgment of the model’s prize-winning success and extraordinary precision.
Over the years, there have been Laureato chronographs, tourbillons, chronometers, 38 mm and 42 mm diameters and cases in everything from sapphire to precious metals.
Girard-Perregaux Laureato Skeleton WinteRace Edition – a special edition watch
To coincide with this year’s WinteRace Cortina, the Swiss marque released a special edition watch, the Laureato Skeleton WinteRace Edition. Housed in a ceramic case, measuring 42mm in diameter, the watch is equipped with the skeletonised GP01800-0006 movement.
Girard-Perregaux Laureato Skeleton WinteRace Edition – ceramic case
Making a ceramic case, let alone a fully-articulated bracelet, isn’t an easy task. Ceramic in bead form needs significant heat and pressure to produce a usable solid. Once you have a broad shape, the material needs to be refined to infinitesimal tolerances using special tools to create the case and bracelet. Bearing in mind that ceramic tools are often used to mill other materials, it’s not surprising that it is so challenging to work with.
Finally, the case and bracelet require finishing, on this occasion, encompassing a combination of circular and straight-brushed finishes. The good news is that once finished, your watch won’t fade or scratch easily no matter how much you wear it. Furthermore, you won’t end up with a stretchy, slack bracelet either, thanks to the ceramic’s hardness and low friction qualities. Besides being good-looking and harder-than-nails, ceramic is lightweight. Indeed, the Laureato Skeleton WinteRace Edition weighs less than 110 grammes, making it the perfect wristwear for racing classic cars.
Girard-Perregaux GP01800-0006 calibre
Given racing is all about weight, it seems fitting that the movement is also appropriately skeletonised and superleggera. The Laureato Skeleton WinteRace Edition features the GP01800-0006 – logically, the cut-away version of the GP01800 (although there’s rather more to it than just removing metal, as we’ll see).
The skeletonisation means you get to see a lot of components that are usually stashed behind bridges and covers. For example, rather than being fully enclosed, you can see the movement’s mainspring as it winds and unwinds through an open barrel, so it acts as an unofficial power reserve indicator. The going train is on full view too, as is the escapement and balance.
The open-worked theme continues (shaving off a few thousandths of a gramme at a time) with the pink gold oscillating weight; it’s a movement that’s all about incremental gains. This applies to the variable inertia balance, too. Girard-Perregaux’s watchmakers regulate the rate of the watch by adjusting minute (as in tiny) weights set within the rim of the balance wheel. The incremental gain here? Positioning the weights inboard reduces air turbulence and resistance, thereby conferring a fractional effect on improving accuracy. But, at this level, watches are all about fractional improvements.
As a further example, GP01800-0006 has 55 internal angles between the bridges. Each one is cut and finished by hand and each needs to meet precisely. That’s made even more challenging when you realise the black PVD-treated mainplate and bridges incorporate four different finishes: bevelling, sandblasting, traits-tirés and circular satination.
In numbers, the GP01800-0006 is 30.00 mm in diameter, 4.16 mm high, comprises 173 hand-finished components, beats at 28,800 vph (4 Hz), features 25 jewels and has a power-reserve of 54 hours.
Girard-Perregaux Laureato Skeleton WinteRace Edition – dial
Of course, none of this technological and watchmaking wizardry is of any use unless you can tell the time with your WinteRace. And this is an area where all too many skeletonised watches fall down. But that’s not the case here. GP has used high-contrast gold-plated baton hands, infilled with green luminous material, to enunciate time. Moreover, the similarly infilled indexes (with the GP logo at 12) are affixed to the flange and cantilever over the cutaway dial. This means you can easily read the time at a quick glance even in low light.
The only aspect of time-telling you might not spot immediately is the running seconds. Rather than cluttering the dial with a sub-seconds dial at 6 or spoiling the simplicity of the hour and minute hands, GP has added a set-back subsidiary seconds, positioned off-centre, adjacent the minute wheel.
The view through the properly screwed-on, not screwed-in, sapphire caseback may be even better than the dialside vista. Not only do you get to see that pink gold rotor doing its stuff, but you get an unimpeded sight of the balance and the openworked balance bridge. Take a closer look and you will note that the screws are recessed within the rim of the balance wheel and there are two C-shaped masselottes on the underside. In many ways, it’s a shame that one can’t simply flip the watch over and wear it the other way around.
Girard-Perregaux Laureato Skeleton WinteRace Edition – closing remarks
Undoubtedly, this watch will appeal to die-hard regularity race obsessives. The Laureato Skeleton WinteRace Edition retails for £44,200, a not inconsequential sum, but considering its impressive specification, it’s a bargain and probably far cheaper than fielding a team and competing in a race season. But it’s not about cost with a race like WinteRace Cortina, it’s the experience of racing some of the most interesting metal on a classic grid this side of Le Mans or Spa. Likewise, when discussing the notion of luxury, it’s not about the destination, it’s about the joy of the journey.
Further reading
Technical specification
- Model: Girard-Perregaux Laureato Skeleton WinteRace Edition
- Reference: 81015-32-3518-32A
- Case: black ceramic, diameter 42 mm, height 11.13 mm; water resistance 10 ATM (100 metres), sapphire crystal to front, exhibition caseback.
- Functions: hours, minutes, small seconds
- Movement: GP01800-0006, self-winding movement, frequency 28,800 vph (4 Hz), 25 jewels; power reserve min. 54 hours, 173 components.
- Bracelet: black ceramic
- Price: £44,200 (RRP as of 24.3.2025)