Fellows and Sons | Established 1876

Girard Perregaux Limited Edition Scuderia Ferrari Rattrapante Foudroyante – Ridiculous name, great watch

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Lot 28 – Girard Perregaux Limited Edition Scuderia Ferrari Rattrapante Foudroyante

The 10 year partnership between Ferrari and Girard Perregaux produced some great watches. This one, created to celebrate the centenary of Scuderia Ferrari has to be one of the most subtle and yet most exciting.

For most of the collection you would have to be a die-hard Ferrari fan to consider a purchase. The prancing horse logo positioned at 12 o’clock would tell the world that it was a Ferrari watch. For the Rattrapante Foudroyante, Girard Perregaux has been more discrete, adding just a SF in cursive script under the centre of the dial. The differentiation between Ferrari and Scuderia Ferrari is important. The latter is the racing team rather than the car maker and was founded back in 1929 by Enzo Ferrari when he drove Alpha Romeos. A Ferrari road car wasn’t produced until 1947 when Enzo reluctantly built and sold them to fund the racing team which, by then, was driving Ferrari’s own creations.

To celebrate 100 years of Scuderia Ferrari, Girard Perregaux took their classic chronograph case and added a couple of special features. The rattrapante, or ‘split chronograph’, is a familiar, if uncommon, complication. Allowing the timing of two separate events, or the pausing of one of the split hands to take a lap reading before allowing it to catch up to the running hand. The foudroyante is a little different. Now cropping up across a number of manufacturers, Girard Perregaux were amongst the first to rediscover this old but interesting feature.

The foudroyante (from the French for lightning) is a hand that travels once around the dial every second. Its jumping nature comes from the fact that it is released every time the balance passes its centre point. The number of fractions of a second that can be displayed on the foudroyante scale are an indication of the frequency of the movement. In this case the movement runs at 4Hz which gives four movements back and forth from the balance which allows eight movements of the hand.

Given that the limit of human reaction time is between one and two tenths of a second, all the modern super-fast chronographs are pointless for practical use. The margin of error created by the user makes accurate timing impossible. What the foudroyante does do is give us a further insight into the working of the movement – particularly the escapement – in a visually engaging way. It’s no less useless than a tourbillon, cheaper to buy and much more fun to fiddle with.

Lot 28, estimated to sell for between £3,000 – £5,000 – click here to find out more.