Panerai Submersible GMT Luna Rossa Titanio PAM01507 Watch Review
The Panerai Submersible GMT Luna Rossa Titanio PAM01507 has just been unveiled at Watches & Wonders 2024. Housed in a 42 mm case formed of Grade 5 titanium, this lightweight dual-time watch is a highly practical ownership proposition for daily use. Mark McArthur-Christie provides an insight into this latest creation to emerge from the Neuchâtel-based Manufacture.
Panerai x Luna Rossa Prada Pirelli
Buying a distillery. Restoring a Bristol 411. Running a classic Le Mans team. Parking for more than 20 minutes in Oxford. These are all splendid pursuits if you’ve inherited an amount of cash that’s embarrassing to talk about in polite company. But for truly wallet-rinsing enjoyment there is little to beat ocean yacht racing, where even the ship’s cat strolls up wearing a custom-made carbon fibre collar.
There is now precisely no need for a watch – let alone a mechanical one – when you’re piloting a few millionsworth of racing yacht through the sea off Barcelona. New technology means that regatta timers, more’s the pity, are old hat and then some. There is now Kit (emphatically with a capital K) for that sort of thing. In the case of the America’s Cup racing yacht Luna Rossa, there are three computers running the yacht. They’re so central to racing now that even the start software is tightly controlled. But that makes a proper watch associated with the race series all the more interesting.
‘Piloting’ is the right term, too. The yachts of the America’s Cup (known by their designation ‘AC75’) can reach speeds of around 50 knots (approximately 100 km/h or 58mph) and they lift themselves out of the water on wings. Matteo Ledri and Andres Suar – Luna Rossa Prada Pirelli fluid dynamics expert and naval architect explain.
“Luna Rossa flies thanks to her foils, wings that are underwater, very similar to those of an airplane, only smaller”, Ledri says. He goes on to explain, “By reaching a certain speed, these wings are able to create an upward force that allows the boat to rise.”
So why put wings on a yacht? Simple – less surface area in the water means less drag which means more speed.
According to Suar, “Unlike an airplane, we can’t give the boat the power we want…. but we can contribute by working on the foils and sails.”
Reading the rules (AC Tech Regs 1A, if you’re interested – it’s worth it), one can see why the sport appeals to watchmakers. The level of precision is the sort of thing with which they’re very familiar. For example, if a Rule states that the length of a particular component must be no more than 5 m, that length must be no more than 5.000000 m. It’s practically home water for the lads and lasses from Neuchâtel.
Panerai, Official Sponsor of Luna Rossa Prada Pirelli (2019)
Panerai started its involvement with the America’s Cup in 2017, as the Official Partner of the Oracle Team USA and Softbank Team Japan. It wasn’t until 2019 that the watch firm became Luna Rossa Prada Pirelli’s sponsor. They’ve seen Luna Rossa through six years of development and, of course, the dark years of Covid. Over these six years of partnership, Panerai has produced a watch for each year of racing.
Panerai – a variety of Luna Rossa models
There have been, appropriately enough, carbon fibre cases (the material of choice for your America’s Cup yacht), steel cases, full-sized and Quaranta cases, chronographs and three handers… plenty of variety. And it’s not just a case of slapping on a logo and calling it done. The PAM01096, for example, has a dial made from ‘Scafotech’ – a carbon fibre composite. In this case, though, Panerai took the material from offcuts of the AC75’s foils and hull.
Panerai Submersible GMT Luna Rossa Titanio PAM01507 – Watches & Wonders 2024
Panerai is launching this year’s Luna Rossa offering – the PAM01507 – at the rather more landlocked Watches and Wonders 2024.
Panerai P.900/GMT calibre
The 2024 Luna Rossa is powered by the automatic, hacking P.900/GMT 28,800 4 Hz movement. Appropriately enough, it packs rather a lot – 171 components and 23 jewels for a start – into racing snake dimensions. The P.900 is a mere ship’s biscuit crumb over 4 mm thick – that’s about two and a half 20p pieces stacked on top of each other. It’s 28 mm in diameter. In your 4.2 mm of movement you get a 3 day power reserve (powered by a bidirectional winding weight) stored in a single barrel. You also get a 24 hour GMT complication; downright handy if you’re doing the sort of jet-setting required of ocean yacht crews.
Panerai Submersible GMT Luna Rossa Titanio PAM01507 – blue and red hues
If you take a look at the tip of the GMT hand, you’ll see a nod to the Luna Rossa team; it’s shaped like the AC75’s sails. The rosso colour carries across to the small seconds dial at 9. The same theme is picked up with the two straps that come with the watch. The first is a two material strap with a red stripe with the words Luna Rossa in white against a blue backdrop. The second is a robust, waterproof blue rubber.
One imagines there’s not a great deal of time for watch-peering on a 50 mph+ racing yacht, but should you want to see how long it is until you can hit the bar (or, more likely, the gym), the whole thing is easy to read quickly and easily. There’s no fussing about with dial frippery; everything there has a job to do.
Panerai Submersible GMT Luna Rossa Titanio PAM01507 – Super-LumiNova® X2
The Luna Rossa is, appropriately, given the name, a cinch to read at night too. To be fair, a Panerai watch tends to emit such an intense lume it makes an ideal torch substitute. However, this new model takes the whole lume thing a stage further.
The indices and the hour hand have green lacquer accents, but the firm has used a new Super-LumiNova® material, X2, on the indices with Super-LumiNova® X-1 on the minute hands and for the dots on the bezel. Super-LumiNova® X2 has a claimed 10% greater luminosity after 180 minutes in the dark than its predecessor. Presumably, this means that one can justify a new Luna Rossa simply on the grounds of reducing one’s household lighting bill.
At this point, the temptation to segue into the next paragraph with a distinctly sub-par pun about light and titanium is almost too strong to resist. But we’re better than that. Just.
Panerai Submersible GMT Luna Rossa Titanio PAM01507 – Grade 5 titanium
The Rossa’s case is titanium, though – Grade 5 in this instance – making it 40% lighter and 60% harder than stainless steel. This isn’t just window dressing. If you’re trying to wind a winch, those few grams of weight will make a big difference to how your watch feels on your wrist.
Neatly, and unsurprisingly, the Luna Rossa yacht herself also has more titanium components than the average space mission. You don’t sacrifice water resistance or robustness for lightness, though. The 42 mm case is water resistant to 50 bar pressure. That’s 500 feet, near as dammit. In fact, Panerai tests the case to a pressure 25% greater than this, just to make sure. To be fair, if that’s a feature you end up needing to call upon as yacht crew, you’ll probably have bigger worries than your watch letting in a bit of water. It does mean this is a thoroughly practical daily wearer though.
The unidirectional bezel is titanium too, with an inlaid blue matt ceramic disc with hash marks up to 15 minutes. That ceramic insert should shrug off pretty much anything you throw at it – or even that you throw it at. If you’ve ever spent time on a yacht at speed, you’ll know being robust, bash-resistant and scratchproof is as handy for one’s watch as oneself. The only downside is that you’ll need to wait until September to get one.
Further reading
Technical specifications
- Model: Panerai Submersible GMT Luna Rossa Titanio PAM01507
- Case: Grade 5 titanium, diameter 42 mm, water resistance 50 ATM (500m), sapphire crystal to the front, screw titanium case back.
- Functions: hours, minutes, small seconds, date, 24 h GMT
- Movement: P.900/GMT calibre, self-winding movement, frequency 28,800 vph (4 Hz), 23 jewels, power reserve 3 days
- Strap: bi-material rubber and blue textile with Luna Rossa red stripe, STD, 22/20. Trapezoidal Titanium pin buckle.
- Price on application