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Pilot Mattia Binotto spotted wearing Richard Mille

Mattia Binotto, the engineer-turned-strategist who steered Scuderia Ferrari's technical and sporting direction through some of the team's most turbulent recent seasons, was photographed wearing a Richard Mille RM 11-01 'Roberto Mancini' in titanium, complete with a distinctive Italian tricolore rubber strap. The sighting places one of Formula 1's most recognisable team principals firmly inside Richard Mille's elite ecosystem — and alongside a piece that carries serious cross-sport credibility.

The RM 11-01 'Roberto Mancini' represents the first horological collaboration between Richard Mille and the celebrated Italian football manager and former Internazionale and Lazio striker. At its technical core sits a flyback chronograph movement — the calibre RMAC2 — offering a genuine complication purpose-built for football: two independent 45-minute countdown displays for each half, with additional registers for extra time and injury time. The case is machined from grade 5 titanium, measuring 50mm × 42.7mm in Richard Mille's signature tonneau form, offering outstanding strength-to-weight ratio while maintaining the brand's characteristic skeletonised aesthetic. Water resistance is rated to 50 metres.

The Roberto Mancini edition occupies a specific niche in the RM 11-series lineage, itself a long-running family of flyback chronographs that has included collaborations with Felipe Massa and McLaren. What sets the Mancini variant apart is the football-specific complication — no other mainstream haute horlogerie piece addresses the sport's unique timekeeping needs with this degree of movement engineering. The tricolore strap reinforces the Italian identity at every glance, and production numbers, as with most Richard Mille collaborations, remain tightly controlled.

Binotto's affinity for the piece is contextually resonant. As Ferrari's Team Principal, he presided over a world governed by split-second timing, pit-stop windows, and strategic countdowns — the same precision logic embedded in the RM 11-01's dual countdown architecture. His choice of wrist real estate is rarely accidental, and a watch built around managing competitive time pressure reads as something more than a fashion statement.

On the secondary market, the Richard Mille RM 11-01 'Roberto Mancini' commands a healthy premium above its already substantial retail positioning. Grey-market demand for named-collaboration RMs has remained firm through recent market corrections, with strong interest from both football culture collectors and mainstream RM enthusiasts.