AG Heuer marks the beginning of a new era of avant-garde watchmaking with the TAG Heuer Monaco Split-Seconds Chronograph Air 1, a high-tech watch that continues the Swiss watchmaker’s rich legacy of precision chronographs inspired by motorsport, and one of the most complex watches it has ever created.

The new watch’s taut, sculpted, uncompromising form also signals the groundbreaking technology that made it possible. Its ultra-lightweight Grade-5 titanium case was made using a state-of-the-art manufacturing technique called Selective Laser Melting (SLM), an additive manufacturing process that is often applied in the aerospace, medical and automotive sectors to create precision components with complex geometries. The Tag Heuer LAB, the company’s illustrious innovation department, adapted SLM for watchmaking, enabling Tag Heuer’s designers and engineers to imagine and deliver a striking three-dimensional form that echoes the aerodynamic lines of contemporary hypercars.

The effect is that the Tag Heuer Monaco Split-Seconds Chronograph Air 1 appears to have been hollowed out, as if designed with speed and airflow in mind, so that it looks like it could have been conceived in a wind tunnel. Weighting just 85 grams, even with a number of solid gold components, it delivers an exceptional weight-to- performance ratio, channeling the extremely reductive design and manufacturing processes used in the parallel world of Formula 1®.

This exceptional case is paired with the most complex chronograph movement in Tag Heuer’s catalog: Calibre TH81-00, a high-frequency automatic movement that equips the Tag Heuer Monaco Split-Seconds Chronograph Air 1 with a rattrapante function.

This new timepiece sits at the apex of Tag Heuer’s collection of high-performance chronographs and begins a new chapter of limitless innovation. Only 30 numbered pieces will be made of this new limited edition.

Tag Heuer’s philosophy has always been to produce watches that deliver functional design: a watch must serve its purpose, be easy to read and operate, and offer its wearer class-leading levels of performance and reliability. However, that philosophy could only ever take watch design so far. Traditionally, watch design has to conform to the limits of technology.

But not with avant-garde techniques, such as Selective Laser Melting.

By using SLM, Tag Heuer has been able to reverse this traditional imbalance and put technology at the service of design, derestricting the creative process and giving the company’s designers free reign to imagine designs unachievable with conventional methods. With the Tag Heuer Monaco Split-Seconds Chronograph Air 1, the design brief was clear: there are no boundaries. A paradigm shift.

So, how does it work? Typical watch cases have multiple base components, each hewn from a single block of material using CNC milling machines that remove material, adding by subtracting. By contrast, SLM is a purely additive process comparable to 3D printing.

It begins with a layer of metal powder – such as aluminium, steel or, in this case, Grade-5 titanium – which is then blasted with a high-powered laser that selectively melts and fuses sections of the powder, guided by a 3D “CAD” (Computer Aided Design) model.

Initially, as this cools and solidifies, it produces a thin sliver of material, but as the process is repeated, adding layer after layer, an object emerges, taking whatever form the designer intended. A final step follows to remove any roughness from the material and give the case its smooth, skin-like finish. In this way, the once impossible case construction of the Tag Heuer Monaco Split-Second Chronograph Air 1 has become a reality.

The 41mm case shape carries all the hallmarks of high-tech, cutting-edge design. Its taut lines and muscular leading edges come together in unique, fluid shapes that echo the air intakes of high-performance cars.

Combined, these then act like a complex exoskeleton that cradles a twin-layered honeycomb-motif mesh that was inspired by the latticed engine covers of hypercars, only that here serve as a movement surround. The case is in Grade-5 titanium, as are the lattices that frame the movement on the caseband, while the lattices under the bezel are laser-cut from gleaming solid 2N yellow gold, the perfect marriage of a precious metal and a high-tech, performant material. The Grade-5 titanium bezel is coated in black DLC, creating a deliberate but balanced contrast that enhances the watch’s assertive profile.

While Tag Heuer’s elite rattrapante chronograph Calibre TH81-00 whirrs quietly and reliably away inside it, the timepiece’s pristine, aerodynamic form looks torquey and expectant, as if it might explode into life at any moment with the roar of a V12 internal combustion engine.

Achieving the complex shapes of the Tag Heuer Monaco Split-Seconds Chronograph Air 1 is hugely labor intensive. It takes a specialist engineer around 10 times longer to program the tooling than for other Tag Heuer Monaco Split-Seconds Chronograph cases, and five times longer for those tools to manufacture it.

Finishing the watch’s high-tech look are a translucent sapphire dial that opens up the movement’s inner workings from above, chronograph pushers and a tapered crown in black-DLC-coated Grade-5 titanium, golden chronograph hands, golden-tipped hour and minute hands, golden hour markers, and front and back sapphire crystals held in place by four visible screws. The split-seconds pusher at 9 o’clock is crafted in solid 2N yellow gold and is a nod to the original left- sided crown of the Tag Heuer Monaco. The watch sits on a sporty black rubber strap topped with alcantara inserts and is fitted with a with a black-DLC-coated Grade-5 titanium buckle.

Inside the TAG Heuer Monaco Split-Seconds Chronograph Air 1 beats TAG Heuer’s Calibre TH81-00, a high- frequency automatic movement with a 65-hour power reserve that beats at 36,000vph (5 Hz), and that was developed in collaboration between Tag Heuer and the esteemed specialist movement creator Vaucher Manufacture Fleurier.

With major components also manufactured in Grade-5 titanium, the Calibre TH81-00 offers exceptional lightness, weighing just 30 grams without compromising on performance, stability or reliability, even in highly challenging environmental conditions. Its components are hand-finished with high-end decorations, including Tag Heuer’s signature checkered flag finish visible through the caseback of the watch made entirely in sapphire crystal.

This cutting-edge mechanical movement powers the watch’s signature complication, a rattrapante, or split-seconds chronograph, which enables the user to time two events that start at the same time but end independently of one another – the lap times of two F1 cars in the same race, for example.

The TAG Heuer Monaco Split-Seconds Chronograph Air 1 is the latest in a long line of groundbreaking TAG Heuer chronographs. The historic Swiss watchmaker, founded in 1860, made its name as the creator of precision timekeeping instruments, developing savoir-faire it has now been building on for more than 160 years.

As early as 1916, the Heuer Mikrograph redefined the measurement of timed events, becoming the world’s first stopwatch chronograph capable of 1/100th of a second accuracy. In more than a century since, Tag Heuer has introduced countless chronograph innovations. It has also worked with the most revered names in motorsport and timed the world’s most prestigious motorsport events, right through to Formula 1® season. Today, TAG Heuer is proud to serve as Formula 1®’s Official Timekeeper, and this year to have become the first-ever title partner of the Formula 1 Tag Heuer Grand Prix de Monaco, the iconic race after which the TAG Heuer Monaco was named. In the past few years, Tag Heuer has accelerated its elite chronograph program, introducing the first Tag Heuer Monaco Split-Seconds Chronograph at Watches and Wonders Geneva 2024, which was nominated for a prestigious Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Genève award. New iterations followed since, including the fascinating TH-Titanium model. The Tag Heuer Monaco Split-Seconds Chronograph Air 1 elevates the concept again, strengthening TAG Heuer’s reputation for innovative chronograph design.

The Tag Heuer Monaco Split-Seconds Chronograph Air 1 is one of the most technologically advanced watches ever created by Tag Heuer, but with its ergonomic design, high levels of legibility and sporty profile, it is a watch that can be worn and used every day, in keeping with Tag Heuer’s watchmaking and design philosophy. Previously a paradox, this is the result of putting technology at the service of design. For Tag Heuer, the door to the next generation of innovative, avant-garde watch designs is now thrown open.

“The Tag Heuer Monaco Split-Seconds Chronograph Air 1 is a watchmaking revolution,” said Tag Heuer chief executive Antoine Pin. “Think of it this way: thanks to SLM, a watch engineer has been able to deliver a watch designer’s wildest creation. The SLM manufacturing process, adapted by the Tag Heuer LAB, takes us into a new dimension, rewriting the received laws of case design. And where better to do that than in the avant-garde Monaco, which in 1969 became the world’s first water-resistant square-cased automatic chronograph. The Tag Heuer Monaco Split-Seconds Chronograph Air 1 marks a new dawn for a true design icon and marks the beginning of a new series of conceptual timepieces involving innovative technologies for the brand.”

TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS

TAG Heuer Monaco Split-Seconds Chronograph Air 1 CBW218B.FT8124

Movement

• Calibre TH81-00
• Automatic Split-Seconds Chronograph
• Frequency: 5 Hertz (36’000 VPH)
• Power reserve: 65 hours (chrono off) / 55 hours (chrono on)

Functions

• Hours, minutes, seconds, chronograph, split-seconds function

Dial

• Sapphire dial with white markings White applied Super-LumiNova® blocks and golden lacquered indexes 3 counters:
   3 o’clock: black opaline minute chronograph counter; white markings; golden lacquered hand
   9 o’clock: black opaline hour chronograph counter; white markings; golden lacquered hand
   6 o’clock: fine-brushed and sandblasted grade-5 titanium permanent second indicator ring; black markings; rhodium plated hand
• Rhodium-plated open-worked hour and minute hands with white Super- LumiNova® and golden lacquered tips
• White lacquered central chronograph hand
• Golden lacquered central split-seconds hand
• TAG HEUER applied logo
• “MONACO” “RATTRAPANTE” “CHRONOGRAPH” printed

Case

• 41mm
• Fine brushed, sandblasted grade-5 titanium case with grade-5 titanium lattices
• Fine brushed, sandblasted grade-5 titanium bezel with black DLC coating, solid 18K 2N yellow gold lattices
• Beveled, domed sapphire crystal
• Black DLC grade-5 titanium crown at 3 o’clock
• Fine brushed, sandblasted black DLC grade-5 titanium shaped push-button at 2 o’clock
• Fine brushed, sandblasted black DLC grade-5 titanium shaped push-button at 4 o’clock
• Fine-brushed, polished solid 18K 2N yellow gold shaped split-seconds push-button at 9 o’clock
• Domed and beveled polished sapphire caseback
• Grade-5 titanium TH81-00 split-seconds chronograph movement with hand finishes Fine-brushed, sandblasted oscillating weight with honeycomb pattern engraved, filled with golden lacquer; “LIMITED EDITION”, “X/30” engravings
• Water resistance: 30 meters

Bracelet

• Black rubber and alcantara strap
• Polished fine-brushed black DLC grade-5 titanium, butterfly folding clasp and safety push buttons

Dimensions

• Lug-to-lug: 47,9mm Thickness: 15,2mm

Availability

• December 2025

Retail SRP

• 150’000 CHF