Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Offshore Rubens Barrichello III

Collectors of Audemars Piguet have a soft spot for the Royal Oak Offshore Rubens Barrichello III. This luxury watch was an extremely limited edition, with just 257 of the rose-gold version produced worldwide. So when one comes up on the market, you can expect it to hang around for about the same length of time as Barrichello's Williams.
There's more than a touch of the Offshore Survivor about the Rubens Barrichello III. It's got the same massive chrono pushers and crown, complete with the machine-like crown guard. On the Offshore Survivor, that crown guard looked like the nozzle of some kind of Predator-destroying weapon. Perhaps a post-apocalyptic flamethrower. On the Royal Oak Offshore Rubens Barrichello III (AP ref 28684RO.OO.D002CR.01), it looks like the stripped-down head of an exhaust pipe.
Detailing across this luxury watch is automotive by nature. The chrono pushers are oddly hollow, fashioned like the sweeping air vents that fight to keep an F1 engine cool. The leather bracelet (black on the outside, gold on the inside) is stitched in red and looks very much like an off-cut from a car seat. And the face, with its pulsing chrono dials and tachymetric chapter ring, looks as though it could measure RPM as well as time.
The chrono dials have been cleverly designed by Audemars Piguet . Each one looks like it has come from a different luxury watch—or, to be more accurate given the theme of the piece, a different racing car. Sweeping seconds at 12 are marked out by a red hand on a silver dial. The 12-hour counter, at 6, is a silver-and-black dial with a white hand. And the 30-minute counter, at 9, is in classic black-and-white, like an old Daytona subdial.
On the rear of the Royal Oak Offshore Rubens Barrichello III, you'll find a solid caseback emblazoned with a stylised number: '257'. This signifies the 2008 Turkish Grand Prix, which was Barrichello's record-breaking 257th race: the design of the number comes from Barrichello's own helmet decals, which were specially created to mark the occasion. Barrichello had a long history of helmet personalisation, taking themes from classic designs used by former F1 heroes—in particular, Emerson Fittipaldi, and Barrichello's own mentor Ayrton Senna. The 257 on his celebration helmet would eventually need replacing: Barrichello competed in a world-record-smashing 326 GPs over the course of an 18-year career.
On the Royal Oak Offshore Rubens Barrichello III, the mega-tapisserie pattern common to the Offshore line is reimagined in order to partially skeletonise the watch. You'll see bridges and cogs beneath the cross-hatches of the openworked tapisserie—making up, a little, for the solidity of the caseback and the missed opportunity to see the movement in full working order. The outer portion of the dial, below the tachymetric chapter ring, is bright red, and houses the minute track and applied hour markers. There's also lume on the hour and minute hands, both of which have a funky three-pronged skeletonisation that recalls the stripped-down nature of the crown guard.
The movement is AP's in-house auto chrono: calibre 2326 / 2840. It's housed inside a 44 mm pink gold case, which is waterproof to 100 m. The glass is sapphire, with a magnifying bubble for the date window (3 o'clock).
The Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Offshore Rubens Barrichello III is a real collector's piece. It's the last in a series of Offshores to celebrate the remarkable career of the Brazilian driver, and probably the best-looking too. If you get the chance to own one of the 257, don't pass it up.
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