The cars perched upon Henry VIII's rolling lawns at the annual Hampton Court Concours d'Elegance saw many a double take in early September, but no one expected a ‘triple’ from the main event sponsor – a triple chronograph, that is.

Quietly unveiled inside A. Lange & Söhne’s pavilion, to the thrumming backdrop of Thirties Bugattis and Nineties Lamborghinis parading around the fountain to the admiration of many a red-trousered petrolhead, it was a surprise reveal from the ‘uhrmacher’ non pareil of former-East Germany’s watchmaking hometown, Glashütte.

Hampton Court Palace provides the backdrop to the Concours of Elegance and Lange’s latest unveiling.

A full 43mm-wide, 16mm-high chunk of 950 platinum housing what’s arguably the horological industry’s most sophisticated stopwatch, first patented back in 2018. “Drop it on the floor,” as Lange’s genial R&D head, Tony de Haas noted, “and you have a hole in the floor.”

Split-time measurement extends across the seconds, minutes and hours, allowing comparisons over as long as 12 hours.

What certainly dropped, around the presentation table, were jaws. A split-seconds chronograph is clever enough: the ability to ‘split’ the central, sweeping 60-second hand via a pusher at 10 o’clock, leaving a superimposed hand stationary – thus recording the time of one event – and leaving the other to continue timing a second event.

But only if each event – say, two runners in a 200-metre sprint – finish within 60 seconds. What Lange’s Triple Split manages, via a mindbogglingly complex 14-layer sandwich of micro-mechanics is ‘splitting’ two other running chronograph hands; the 30-minute sub-counter at 3 o’clock and 12-hour sub-counter at 12 o’clock. So now you can compare two runners’ marathon times, not just sprints. Or, given Lange’s principal partnership with Hampton Court’s concours, two GT1 cars at the 12 Hours of Sebring.

The Triple Split in platinum, with a rhodié-coloured dial and a sapphire caseback revealing the manually wound calibre L132.1.

What’s more, this is a ‘rattrapante’ or ‘catch-up’ split seconds chronograph – the three frozen, superimposed hands in blue can be flung back beneath the upper rhodium-plated hands and resume their track. What’s even more is that all six stopwatch hands are ‘flyback’: you can reset everything to zero with a click of the pusher at 4 o’clock for instant resumption of a subsequent event.

The Calibre L132.1’s technical failsafes literally run deep, with frictional disengagement of levers minimised throughout the splitting and resetting process, all the while assembled by one watchmaker per watch for days on end, while trying not to scratch Lange’s typically immaculate, ‘Saxon’ style of hand-finish (stripes, blued screws, gold washers or ‘chains’, engraved balance wheel bridges…

As de Haas quips, “it’s more of a ‘trouble split’ than Triple Split,” for anyone getting their head in the game.

The 567-part calibre L132.1 combines triple split-time measurement with a flyback function and meticulous hand-finishing.

While Henry VIII was more into his hunting, tilting and réal tennissing, the automotive beauty and brilliance that Lange’s hoardings find themselves in amongst at Concours with every year makes this high-octane engine in miniature more fitting than ever, at Hampton Court Palace’s stunning event. Though one does have to concede that the Triple Split’s gleaming new platinum ‘chassis’ hardly makes a case for power-to-weight ratios…

A. Lange & Söhne

Triple Split in platinum

£181,000.00

Limited to 100 pieces (approx.€210,000)

Enquire now