TAG Heuer at Monza with a pair of racing chronographs

What stayed with Gabriele was the proximity, first to the person running Red Bull and then to the team and car in the garage.

TAG Heuer returned as the Official Timekeeper of Formula 1 in 2025, and its partnership with Red Bull began in 2016. The Italian Grand Prix weekend put both relationships around one table and one garage.

Friday evening with Laurent Mekies

The weekend began at a TAG Heuer dinner shaped around Formula 1 and motorsport. One of the central moments was an intimate talk with Laurent Mekies, CEO and Team Principal of Oracle Red Bull Racing.

Mekies spoke about the pressure around a Grand Prix, what drivers experience through a race weekend and the work required to build and manage a winning team. Gabriele described the conversation as the part that gave the evening depth. It brought leadership, precision and teamwork out of the usual language of watches and into the decisions of a Formula 1 team.

The Monaco Chronograph on his wrist carried its own racing history. TAG Heuer introduced the square Monaco in 1969 and connects the model both to the Monaco Grand Prix and to Steve McQueen’s appearance in the 1971 film Le Mans. For Gabriele, wearing it while discussing Formula 1 made the connection between the two worlds feel very natural.

Saturday inside the Red Bull garage

Saturday moved to Autodromo Nazionale Monza for Italian Grand Prix qualifying. Gabriele’s access to the Red Bull garage brought him close to the car and the team working around it.

“The noise, vibrations, speed, atmosphere of the crowd and proximity to the cars give you an understanding of the sport that a screen simply cannot reproduce,” he wrote after the weekend.

Watching the garage operate changed Gabriele’s appreciation of how much precision, technology and coordination sit behind every lap. “These are concepts we normally use when talking about watches, but inside an F1 garage they become very real,” he wrote.

The qualifying result itself was mixed for Red Bull. Max Verstappen finished sixth on the timesheets, while Liam Lawson was 14th after traffic disrupted his last Q2 lap, ending the team’s plan to use him for a tow in Q3.

Mekies said the team had “some mixed feelings” after qualifying. The pace had improved from Friday and the gap to the front had narrowed, although the result remained below the team’s target.

Monaco on Friday, Monza at Monza

For Saturday, Gabriele changed to the TAG Heuer Monza. By TAG Heuer’s account, the model was introduced in 1976 after Ferrari and Niki Lauda won the 1975 constructors’ and drivers’ championships. It took the name of the Italian circuit and became the brand’s first watch with a black-coated case.

The Monza’s black case is clear in the photographs Gabriele supplied, along with his Saturday TAG Heuer pass. “Monaco on Friday night, Monza at Monza on Saturday,” was how he framed the pairing.

His conclusion from the weekend was equally direct. TAG Heuer’s connection to Formula 1 made more sense from inside the sport, where fractions of a second, engineering decisions and performance under pressure could be watched rather than described.

TAG Heuer hosted Gabriele throughout the experience. He asked The Crown Journal to thank Leo, Andrea and the wider TAG Heuer team for making the weekend possible.