Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Chronograph Leo Messi – 26325TS.OO.D005CR.01

Football legend Leo Messi helped to design the Royal Oak chrono that bears his name—and it's the first in Audemars Piguet's legendary luxury sports watch series to showcase a dial with a smooth finish. This design change is a subtle but significant departure from the Royal Oak look, and it gives the watch an understated feel and sleek appearance.
Historically, the Audemars Piguet Royal Oak has always had a tapisserie dial (a dial featuring a raised waffle pattern made using ancient pantographs). The Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Chronograph Leo Messi 26325TS.OO.D005CR.01 has a brushed anthracite dial instead, with a matte finish that creates a wonderfully technical look, and contrasts well with the bright steel rings and black centres of the subdials.
The chronograph functions are displayed in a 30-minute counter subdial at 3 o'clock, an hour/half hour counter subdial at 9 o'clock, and a sweeping chronograph hand. There is a third small seconds subdial at 6 o'clock, and a date window between 4 and 5 o'clock.
This is an automatic watch, with unidirectional winding. When the 18-carat gold oscillating weight moves in an anticlockwise motion, the calibre moves the wheel train and winds the spring: so if you're keeping your Leo Messi chrono juiced with a rotating watch box, you'll need to set the rotation in a clockwise direction. The watch is powered by the self-winding AP calibre 2385, which has a 40 h power reserve and beats at 3.00 Hz.
The Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Chronograph Leo Messi 26325TS.OO.D005CR.01 has a case diameter of 41 mm. The caseback is solid. The crystal is sapphire glass. This luxury watch is waterproof to a respectable 50 m—not quite a diver's depth, but more than enough for a leisurely swim in the Bahamas.
The dial is grey with baguette-style hour markers. The bluish-grey two-tone 'large square scale' alligator strap is secured with a folding deployant clasp, in steel.
The Audemars Piguet 26325TS.OO.D005CR.01 is available in stainless steel, in a limited edition of 500. An even more limited edition run of 100 luxury watches were produced in titanium, and there was a 400-piece limited run in rose gold.
As befits a chrono designed by a football star, the Royal Oak Leo Messi functions perfectly as a dedicated sports watch. It's even supplied with a secondary rubber strap, so you can keep the alligator strap in pristine condition for dressier wear. At 10.95 mm, this luxury watch is a perfect 'under the cuff' fit, and will sit just as well with the lines of a suit as it does with jeans and a t-shirt for downtime wear. In other words: you can wear it in the heat of the action, or you can leave it in the dressing room.
The dual-pushpiece chronograph complication is designed to measure consecutive times without the need to return to zero. The top pushpiece both starts and stops the chrono, so to obtain combined times you simply start the complication again at the relevant time. The lower pushpiece resets the mechanism.
The original Royal Oak was designed by watch genius Gerald Genta in just one night, and has been the mainstay of serious luxury sports watch collections since 1972. The world's first oversized luxury sport watch, the Royal Oak set the modern trend for larger cases—and for performance watches that are as comfortable in the boardroom as they are on the squash court. I'm betting it took Leo Messi a bit longer than a single night to come up with the Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Chronograph Leo Messi 26325TS.OO.D005CR.01—but the end result is as slick and sophisticated as the Argentine's left foot. If you can get your hands on one of these limited edition chronos , it will make a worthy addition to your watch safe.
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Image Credit – officialwatches.com vedere di piu orologi e Chopard Happy Sport