RM 27 Tourbillon Rafael Nadal

The partnership between Richard Mille and Rafael Nadal begins in 2010 with the launch of the RM 027, presented as the lightest tourbillon ever made up to that point: under 20 grams including the strap, thanks to a carbon-composite case designed to withstand the stresses of a tennis tournament played at the highest level — impacts, sweat, temperature swings — without affecting its running. From that first model springs one of the longest-running sporting collaborations in contemporary watchmaking, continued for fifteen years through a series of direct evolutions, each conceived as a testbed for new technical solutions before their adoption on other lines of the brand.

In 2013 the RM 27-01 lowers the weight to 18.83 grams by introducing a movement plate suspended inside the case by four braided steel cables just 0.35 mm in diameter, capable of absorbing accelerations above 5,000 g thanks to the use of grade 5 titanium for the tourbillon and an aluminum-lithium alloy for the bridges and gear train — a solution inspired more by the civil engineering of tensioned structures than by classical watchmaking. In 2015 the RM 27-02 introduces a skeletonized "monocoque" plate in Carbon TPT directly inspired by the chassis of racing cars, and is also the model with which Quartz TPT makes its absolute debut, the composite made of quartz filaments and layers of carbon developed with the specialist North Thin Ply Technology, which would later become one of the brand's technical signatures.

Later versions push the records further still: the RM 27-03 (2017) withstands impacts up to 10,000 g thanks to its Carbon TPT and Quartz TPT case, a figure no other mechanical timepiece of the era claimed to sustain; the RM 27-04, presented in 2020 for the tenth anniversary of the collaboration, introduces a mesh-like case explicitly recalling the strings of a tennis racket and reaches 12,000 g. The most recent chapter, the RM 27-05 Flying Tourbillon of 2024, developed over more than 4,000 hours of work, is currently the lightest hand-wound tourbillon ever made by the brand, with a movement of just 11.5 grams: a milestone presented as the culmination — and for now the latest chapter — of a technical journey spanning a decade and a half alongside the tennis player from Manacor.