I'm staring at the bright Salinas sky as I jam the brakes, release lightly, and pivot my 911 Carrera S clockwise into a 59-foot, five-and-a-half-story freefall. I've tackled the motorsports rollercoaster that is Laguna Seca's Corkscrew more times than most, but somehow it's never enough.
This time feels more locked in than usual. The 911's instrument cluster may have gone digital, but strapped to my wrist is a timepiece as reassuringly mechanical as the flat-six behind the rear axle: the titanium Porsche Design Chronograph 1, its mechanical heart on display through a sapphire caseback.
Photo: Porsche
These picture-perfect laps are part of the newly launched Porsche Track Experience at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca, only the second such setup in the country. While the Porsche Experience Centers in Atlanta and Los Angeles offer a la carte instruction on closed courses, the Track Experiences at Barber Motorsports Park and Laguna Seca engage at full road-racing circuits.
Laguna Seca is attractively close to my SoCal digs. When Porsche offered up a loaner 911 in an uncomplicated shade of Guards Red for a weekend in Salinas, and Porsche Design lined up its just-released Chronograph 1 in titanium, I happily traded a 45-minute flight for the pair of five-hour drives.
Photo: Porsche
Photo: Porsche
Despite being a tired LA cliché, the Porsche 911 remains one of the most evocatively honest sports cars money can buy, a rare icon whose roots go back more than six decades. Its slope-tailed silhouette has stayed essentially unchanged since its 1963 debut, exactly as the Chronograph 1's dial has barely moved since 1972, both designs that evolved rather than restarted. It is also an icon that knows it: my borrowed Carrera S rings in at $178,755, a startling figure considering how many variants live above it.
The Porsche Design chronograph looks perfectly at ease in the cabin of this 2+2 sports car. Maybe it's the row of knurled toggles along the center stack, or the similarly styled Sport Chrono timing device on the dashboard.
Porsche Design's titanium Chronograph 1, the new All Titanium Numbered Edition, rings in at $8,250; the PVD-coated black version runs $9,650. I'll admit a whiff of nostalgia at the matte black dial, which traces a line back to the PVD-coated Porsche Design by Orfina that Tom Cruise wore in both Top Gun films. My borrowed example lacks the aged lume on Cruise's wrist candy, but the design language remains delightfully tight: a white-on-black dial drawn to echo the first 911's instrument cluster, with running seconds at nine and the day and date at three, a clear-as-day red second hand, the same Guards Red as the 911, that resets to 12 o'clock, and a case-matched titanium bracelet with a finely finished, bead-blasted texture. The sapphire crystal wears a sevenfold anti-reflective coating that Porsche Design says is derived from the low-glare displays in its cars' cockpits.
Porsche Design was launched by Ferdinand Alexander "Butzi" Porsche in 1972, and the Chronograph 1, the world's first all-black PVD-coated wristwatch, was among its first projects. The design impresario's mission was simple: a watch to match the car. Early examples ran a Valjoux 7750 before Porsche Design switched to a Lemania 5100 around 1975, with Orfina building the watch through 1978.
My tester carries a Porsche Design caliber WERK 01.140, a COSC-certified movement built on a base supplied by Concepto. It is a cam-actuated automatic descended from the workhorse Valjoux 7750, whose dimensions it retains, with no flyback function.
Photo: Porsche
Porsche Design has invested in an in-house movement and assembly facility, which officially opened in Grenchen, Switzerland, earlier this year. Porsche says it is the only automaker with its own dedicated watchmaking facility. That's a big claim, but a defensible one: the other high-end car brands with timepiece associations, Aston Martin, Bugatti, and Mercedes-AMG among them, are leveraging marketing relationships rather than building watches themselves.
I've experienced plenty of other automotive watch linkups, but none of them feel quite as cohesive as this. When Porsche PR handed me the Chronograph 1, it felt immediately at home on my wrist, its deployant clasp shutting with a light click. My first few hours were spent watching the IMSA races at Laguna Seca, where it was easy to root for Porsche Penske's pair of factory 963s, finished in an endearing retro Apple Computer livery for the series' first throwback weekend.
After the non-factory JDC-Miller MotorSports Porsche 963 took a hair-raising win on Sunday, beating the leading Cadillac by 0.758 seconds, the next day it was my turn to get schooled at Laguna Seca's Porsche Track Experience.
The day's instruction follows a somewhat bespoke program; given my media group's familiarity with track driving, our chalk-talk session adjourns promptly in order to maximize track time. Lucky us.
My group of three students is soon led around the track by a pro racer communicating over an in-car radio. Our leader's brisk, effortless pace betrays both his race-driving experience and his deep knowledge of the circuit. It's also clear he must have eyes in the back of his head, or at least excellent mirrors, as he dictates notes based on our braking and turn-in points, racing-line discipline, and car control as we mash the throttle out of corners. What's satisfying about this particular instruction is that it's been personalized to our levels of experience; we tackle lap after lap with continual feedback. "This," I think inside my carbon-fiber Stilo helmet, "is heaven."
Photo: Porsche
The buttoned-down Chronograph 1 on my wrist feels entirely in sync with the ruthless efficiency of high-speed track driving. There is nothing superfluous on the dial or sub-dials, no flourishes or flash to distract from the elemental act of capturing elapsed time via the pushers and the bright red second sweep. The 911's onboard telemetry is better equipped to record track data, along with footage embedded with a track map and GPS speed readout, but there is something inherently wonderful about the watch linking me to larger-than-life figures like Mario Andretti, who wore a Chronograph 1 during his 1978 Formula 1 championship season. Considering I'm earthbound, the Maverick connection is a bit more tenuous. Motorsports and pop culture references aside, the Chronograph 1 is functional in form and light on the wrist, its matte titanium adding a lighter note against a cabin dominated by dark leather and Bauhaus minimalism.
After an intense day of at-limit driving and finessing Laguna Seca's 11 turns across 2.238 miles, it's time to swap the track car for a Carrera T Cabriolet and point it home toward LA with the top down. It's no wonder these two mechanical totems enjoy an effortless connection most watch brands and carmakers would envy.
