TAG HEUER & McLAREN: A bigger & stronger partnership 11.03.2013: During the Geneva Motor Show, Jean-Christophe Babin, TAG Heuer’s President & CEO

During the Geneva Motor Show, Jean-Christophe Babin, TAG Heuer’s President & CEO, and Ron Dennis, Executive Chairman of the McLaren Group, announced a new exclusive partnership agreement.


TAG Heuer will continue to supply the official timepiece for the Vodafone McLaren Mercedes Formula 1 team and the partnership will be extended to include McLaren Automotive, the manufacturer of world leading high performance sports cars including the 12C and McLaren P1™.


TAG Heuer and McLaren engineers already have a strong technical partnership, working together on timepieces and on-board timekeeping systems, highlighting the connections between watchmaking and racing car production. 


The partnership announced today will extend the relationship, as with an eye to the future TAG Heuer will support McLaren’s ''Young Driver Development Programme'', a scheme to identify and support the most talented young drivers. For many years TAG Heuer has successfully supported the rise of great F1 champions, and working closely with McLaren this is set to continue.


As part of this new partnership Sergio Perez - the talented Mexican driver – will be an ambassador for the Swiss brand, together with the Formula 1 World Champion Jenson Button.


In order to seal their partnership and celebrate McLaren’s 50th anniversary, as well as the 50th anniversary of the Carrera timepiece, the TAG Heuer logo now be visible on the rear spoiler of McLaren cars, as well as on the drivers’ suits and team apparel.


“At TAG Heuer, we believe in lasting relationships that are built over time. This new agreement extending a partnership that has already lasted 28 years is proof of that.


A long adventure, with many successes along the way: 140 victories, 134 pole positions, 373 podiums, 6 car-maker titles, and above all 9 world champions – from Prost to Senna and from Hakkinen to Hamilton – who have proudly worn our colours and chronographs on tracks all over the world.


Today we also celebrate common values - performance, precision, prestige and innovation – that have guided us since 1985 and that will continue to unite us” declared Jean-Christophe Babin.


Speaking in Geneva Ron Dennis said “I am delighted to be able to extend and broaden our longstanding relationship with TAG Heuer. We have shared a successful partnership lasting 28 years, during which time we have achieved world beating success on the track. 


Excitingly, our relationship will now extend to the road. McLaren Automotive has designed some of the world’s most exciting cars and we share with TAG Heuer an ethos of inspirational design, exemplary quality, high performance and attention to detail – making us natural partners.  We are about to enter an exciting new phase in our relationship.”


The first watchmaking brand to use drivers as ambassadors in the nineteen-sixties, the number one watch brand, and in particular the first non-technical sponsor committed to a team from the nineteen-seventies, TAG Heuer remains the benchmark brand in motor-racing sport. This renewed and extended agreement between TAG Heuer and McLaren is the natural continuation of this unique story.


TAG Heuer’s unique motor racing heritage and DNA


The world’s top manufacturer of prestigious sports chronographs and watches since 1860, TAG Heuer is the watch brand of reference in the world of motor sports, having built an unrivalled reputation on the core values of motor racing and luxury sports cars: advanced design and materials, high technology and performance movements, ultimate precision and unsurpassed reliability.


TAG Heuer was the first watch brand to develop dashboards chronograph for sports cars, partner with racing drivers, sponsor an F1 team, and master chronometric time to 1/10th, 1/100th, 1/1,000th and 1/10,000th of a second.


From the first car dashboard chronograph, the famous Time of Trip launched in 1911, to the revolutionary, belt-driven Monaco V4 of 2009, TAG Heuer has an unrivalled motor racing legacy. In 1933, it rolled out the Autavia, the first dashboard timekeeper for both automobiles and aviation, and in 1958 the Rally-Master, a double dashboard timer that paired the Master Time 8-day clock and the Monte Carlo 12-hour stopwatch.


Then, following the inaugural launch of the famous TAG Heuer Carrera in 1963, TAG Heuer launched the Monaco, the Monza and the Silverstone, each a tribute to a legendary racetrack. In 1966, at the beginning of the electronic revolution, the Microtimer became the world’s first miniaturized electronic timing instrument accurate to an extraordinary 1/1,000th of a second.


In 1973, the Microsplit 820 was unveiled, the first pocket quartz timing instrument precise to 1/100th of a second. More recently, TAG Heuer launched the Carrera Mikrograph, Mikrotimer and Mikrogirder, displaying mechanically the 1/100th, 1/1000th and 5/10’000th of a second, a quest for ultimate accuracy inspired by  motor racing spirit.


In 2013, TAG Heuer celebrates 50 years of Carrera, the iconic collection inspired by the mythical Panamericana Race.

From 1860 to the present, from Scuderia Ferrari in the 70’ to McLaren today, from Indy 500 to Le Mans with Audi Sport, from the Panamericana to the Monaco Grand Prix, from Juan-Manuel Fangio to Jenson Button, from World Rally Championship with Sebastien Ogier to Romain Grosjean in F1… when it comes to true motor-racing lineage, no other brand comes close.



About McLaren Group

The McLaren Group is an organisation with one goal: to win. It is perhaps best known for its successful and iconic Vodafone McLaren Mercedes Formula 1 cars, but it is more than just a racing team. Guided by the vision of executive chairman Ron Dennis, one of the UK’s most dynamic entrepreneurs, the McLaren Group encompasses an exciting range of ultra-high-technology businesses including McLaren Applied Technologies, McLaren Electronic Systems, Absolute Taste and McLaren Marketing.



About McLaren Automotive:

McLaren Automotive is a British manufacturer of luxury, high-performance sports cars, located at the McLaren Technology Centre (MTC) in Woking, Surrey.

Following the company’s global launch in 2010, McLaren Automotive launched the groundbreaking 12C and 12C Spider and, in keeping with its plan to introduce a new model each year, recently unveiled the McLaren P1™. The brand continues to expand, operating through a dedicated global network of retailers in every major automotive market.


McLaren Automotive Partners

To support the development, engineering and manufacture of its range of innovative and highly acclaimed sports cars, McLaren Automotive has partnered with world leading companies to provide specialist expertise and technology.  These include Akebono, AkzoNobel, ExxonMobil, Pirelli, SAP and TAG Heuer.



Designed for the track; Developed for the road


The connection between Formula 1 and road cars at McLaren is a natural process of experience, knowledge, principles and process transfer. Through the integration of 50 years of Formula 1 racing expertise and knowledge, and 20 years of heritage in producing landmark sports cars, McLaren Automotive designs, develops and builds the technologically advanced, groundbreaking and no compromise 12C, 12C Spider and McLaren P1™.


McLaren has pioneered the use of carbon fibre in vehicle production over the past 30 years, and since introducing a carbon chassis into racing and road cars with the 1981 McLaren MP4/1 and 1993 McLaren F1 respectively, McLaren has not built a car without a carbon fibre chassis.



Matt Bishop,    Ben Heatley, photo McLaren