Tag Heuer Just Brought Back One of Its Coolest ’70s Formula One Racing Watches

Tag Heuer has plenty of famous racing watches. The Monza is the one for people who have gone a little further down the rabbit hole.

First launched in 1976, it was created to celebrate Ferrari’s 1975 Formula 1 triumph, when Niki Lauda won the Drivers’ Championship and Ferrari took the Constructors’ title. The original Monza came in a black-coated case with a black dial, red details and both tachymeter and pulsometer scales – a striking combination that established one of Heuer’s more unusual racing chronographs.

Now, for its 50th anniversary, it’s back.

The new Tag Heuer Monza Flyback Chronograph is limited to 500 pieces and uses a 42mm forged-carbon case housing Tag Heuer’s COSC-certified automatic TH20-12 flyback chronograph movement. There’s 100 metres of water resistance, a perforated black calfskin strap with red stitching and a UK price of £11,300.

More importantly for Monza obsessives, the black dial and red accents deliberately bring it closer to the 1976 original.

“This is a continuation of the story that we started in 2021 with the forged-carbon case,” Tag Heuer heritage director Nicholas Biebuyck tells Esquire. “With the last version, with the translucent dial and the blue accents, it was very much inspired by the colours of Monza Circuit. What we realised was there was a demand for people to go to something closer to the original design. So this is why we’ve got the black dial, the red accents, these kind of things.”

Don’t expect the Monza suddenly to become Tag's next Monaco, though. Its slightly outsider status is part of the attraction.

“It’s quite popular among collectors,” says Biebuyck. “We have people who are very enthusiastic about Monza, but it is a bit more of a deep cut. It’s not nearly as present as Monaco. Even since it was reintroduced in 2000, it’s had a few different variations. They’ve tried to make it work in a few different ways.”

That makes the Monza an unusual proposition for Tag: a watch with genuine history behind it, but without the instant familiarity of the Monaco or Carrera. And 50 years after the original appeared, this new version makes a pretty convincing case for getting to know it.

This story originally appeared on Esquire.com.

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