Last month, a surreptitious early glimpse of TAG Heuer’s full-scale revival—officially revealed today—of its iconic plastic-cased 1980s watch, the “Formula 1,” appeared in the fitting setting of the Grand Prix racetrack.

For the 2025 F1 season, the watchmaker, appointed the sport’s official timekeeper under a mega-sponsorship deal inked by its parent company, luxury conglomerate LVMH, has installed an eye-catching clock tower above the pit lane. The clock’s dive-style dial, “Mercedes” hour hand, and notched, bright-red bezel were instantly recognizable to anyone familiar with the original multicolored Formula 1 watch—which launched in 1986 and sold in its millions—or with the limited remake that briefly appeared last year, as a collaboration with the US streetwear label Kith.

Eagle-eyed TAG Heuer super-buffs (of which there are plenty) will also have spotted details that suggested something new: bolder dial proportions, squarer numerals on the bezel, and the modern TAG Heuer logo.

Sure enough, this is the format for the new take on the old favorite, announced today as a full, entry-level addition to the watch brand’s product line-up—albeit, at 38 mm, somewhat bigger than the original (the old model was 35 mm). Subtle design enhancements are deployed to give it a more contemporary feel: applied luminous hour markers, crisper hands, and a sleeker, more angular interpretation of the old case-shape, with its “hooded” lug protuberances originally designed to reinforce the plastic casing around the strap attachment.

A nod toward eco credentials comes in the form of bioplastic—a castor-based polyamide which the brand has named TH-Polylight—an on-trend substitute for the “Arnite” thermoplastic of old. As before, though, this is molded over a steel inner core, making for a watch that’s rather more robust than most plastic-cased equivalents.

There are nine variants: three in sandblasted stainless steel with green, black, or blue polymer bezels and six full-color limited-editions to become available at upcoming Grand Prix races, with cases and bezels in contrasting tones, including yellow/black, red/black, and green/red, all with matching rubber straps.

What the TAG spotters won’t have gleaned from the pit lane clock, however, is that the updated Formula 1, officially titled the TAG Heuer Formula 1 Solargraph, is also the latest step in TAG Heuer’s plan to elevate the prestige of solar power by making it the backbone of its entry-level offering.

As with certain models in TAG’s Aquaracer sports-watch category, the new piece contains the brand’s solar-powered TH-50 movement using tech from Citizen, the Japanese company, attached to a movement supplied by the latter’s Swiss subsidiary, La Joux-Perret. At $1,800 (£1,650), the Formula 1 Solargraph is more than $1,000 cheaper than the basic Aquaracer Solargraph, and now by some distance the most affordable watch in TAG Heuer’s lineup. Nevertheless, within the broader category of solar-powered watches it carries a significant Swiss Made premium (for equivalent functionality, Citizen’s own watches top out at around $600).

The dial, consisting of two superposed polymer layers, allows light through to a solar cell beneath it, charging an accumulator storage unit that delivers energy to the movement. If left in darkness (in a drawer, for instance), a fully charged watch will continue to run for 10 months, an improvement on the six months originally claimed for the TH-50 movement (and also for Citizen’s own Eco Drive models). It can also be left in power-saving mode, with the crown pulled out to prevent the hands moving, for up to two and a half years, and takes just 10 seconds of light exposure to restart.

On the one hand, it’s notable that TAG Heuer—with its eyes firmly on the spending power of millions of Gen-Z consumers drawn to Formula 1’s mushrooming presence as a digital-first, Netflix-assisted pop-cultural phenomenon—continues to see electronic timekeeping as the gateway to its luxury watches. Like many brands, it has long used Swiss-made battery-powered movements for entry-level watches, but here the brand is attempting to position solar power as a modern, premium format, and a guarantee of the convenience and performance it says young buyers, in particular, are after.

“From a client’s perspective, it’s a major benefit, because a standard quartz watch battery lasts two to three years, while the accumulator has a lifespan of over 15 years, and you don’t have to worry about the servicing needed for a mechanical watch,” says the brand’s movement director, Carole Forestier-Kasapi. “It’s accurate to within a couple of seconds a month, which is exceptional.”

An industry veteran charged with uplifting the technical side of TAG Heuer’s offering across its portfolio, Forestier-Kasapi says that extending the use of solar power is one of the key elements of that brief. A lack of Swiss uptake of solar tech (in luxury watches, Cartier produces a £3,300 solar-powered model, but there are few other examples) is attributable to the lack of Swiss-based suppliers with the capabilities to produce it, and a consequent suspicion of the technology’s value and worth.

This latter point, claims Forestier-Kasapi, is plainly wrong. And for the Swiss Made element, Citizen’s acquisition of La Joux-Perret—a specialist in haute horlogerie movement making—over a decade ago has delivered something of a convenient workaround. According to TAG Heuer, a “knowledge transfer” of IP, including patent rights, to La Joux-Perret from its Japanese owner has enabled it to develop the TH-50 movement exclusively for TAG Heuer, incorporating Citizen’s tech. “The fundamental technology is the same, but it’s a completely distinct development process,” says Forestier-Kasapi.

The key solar module and circuitry are nevertheless shipped from Japan, but with the timekeeping elements designed and made within La Joux-Perret. That means the movement meets the bar for “Swiss Made,” which by law requires development and assembly of a movement, along with 51 percent of the value of its components, to be in Switzerland. For the finished watch, assembly, and final inspection, along with the Swiss Made movement and at least 60 percent of the manufacturing costs, are needed.

The somewhat porous nature of these requirements—which allows myriad brands to creep in under the wire with multiple components, cases, dials, and bracelets sourced from far afield, including the Formula 1 Solargraph’s bioplastic elements, which are made in Asia—is a topic of regular (and increasing) debate within the Swiss industry. But it’s also something, TAG Heuer can reasonably assume, that’s of rather less importance to the audiences it’s targeting with what is, by any degree, a peppy and vibrant wristwatch, and one delivering a high-grade update on a quirky and distinctive legacy.

Not least, TAG Heuer’s return to Formula One—both the watch and the sport—is being seen internally by its managers as a watershed moment in its mission to recapture momentum (and market share) lost in the decade prior to the pandemic. For the brand’s long-term fans, it’s something of a homecoming.

The racetrack has for decades been TAG Heuer’s natural milieu. Its specialist timing equipment was used by teams from the early days of the sport, and from the 1960s onward its chronograph watches became staples in the world of motorsport. In 1971 it became the first watchmaker to feature its logo on a Formula One car when it entered into a commercial partnership with Ferrari. It later became a long-term sponsor of McLaren, and it currently has a tie-up with Oracle Red Bull Racing.

It was also Heuer’s association with the sport that resulted in the addition of the “TAG” acronym, which first appeared on the original Formula 1. In 1985, Heuer, then floundering under the stewardship of Piaget (today owned by Richemont Group), was majority-acquired by the company behind the McLaren racing team, Techniques d’Avant Garde (TAG), whose owners saw clear opportunities for synergistic leverage. Heuer, which by then had largely abandoned its former specialism in automotive chronographs for diving watches, had a fresh, cut-price play on the diving design ready to go, with a breezy style and multicolored thermoplastic case inspired, supposedly, by the world of Californian surf culture. All it lacked was a name.

A swift revision saw the watch packaged as the debut product—and a commercial flag in the ground—of the new TAG Heuer, with the combined logo added to the dial and strap and given the name of the sport that ran through both sides of the deal. Made until 1995, it sold by the bucketload and was worn by McLaren’s world-beating class of drivers including Ayrton Senna, Alain Prost, and Michael Schumacher.

It’s not hard to see that the Formula 1 was conceived, at least in part, as a response to the huge popularity of the plastic Swatch (launched in 1983), though with 200-meter water resistance and its plastic case molded around a steel core, the Formula 1 was certainly a more premium product. And despite its conceptual origins, its vibrant quirkiness ended up capturing something of the colorful energy of the motorsport in that era.

“It embodied the sense of the 1980s and Formula 1 at that time—a real freedom, a strong character, and an expressive identity,” says TAG Heuer’s design lead, Julien Delcambre, responsible for upgrading its features for the Solargraph version. “Those are things that resonate now as well, and there’s obviously excitement for 1980s style too, and that’s what makes it so cool. It can speak to younger buyers who are discovering it for the first time but also older collectors who remember the original Formula 1. There’s a real emotional connection.”

If the Formula 1’s origins were heavily influenced by the success of the Swatch, then its revival with Kith last year could be interpreted as something of a concession to the hype around the MoonSwatch, Swatch’s Omega tie-up launched in 2022, which unquestionably galvanized interest in TAG Heuer’s own plastic watch.

As a like-for-like remake targeted at niche collectors (whether of hype products or of vintage watches), Kith’s edition even saw the brand engage the Swiss supplier of the original cases, which still had the necessary molds in its archives. But as a serious representation of TAG Heuer today, it was little more than a passing fancy. Delcambre says it didn’t even have his involvement, since as a like-for-like remake, there wasn’t any design involved.

The Formula 1 Solargraph, by contrast, is targeted firmly at the widest possible contemporary audience, as TAG Heuer looks to cash in on the power of F1 in the age of Liberty Media, the conglomerate whose ownership has taken the once-moribund motorsport to new heights and new generations of fans.

With the watch’s new sizing, crisp detailing, and robust straps and bracelets, it has an ergonomic solidity of a quite different order to its flimsy forebear, not least in the satisfying “click” of its most tactile element, the bidirectional rotating bezel—a distinct improvement on the puny, plasticky, unidirectional rotation of both the 1980s original and last year’s re-creation. Back in the testing labs, it’s put through further robotically controlled punishment—torsion testing on its straps and bracelet, pressure and shock testing, and a robot that simulates a decade of usage—that would surely destroy the original models in short order.

TAG Heuer has also overhauled the wider, nonplastic Formula 1 line that grew out of the Arnite-cased original and which has represented its broad base offering for many years with a variety of automotive-inspired designs. The collection has been streamlined and heavily upgraded, in keeping with modernizations to the brand’s other core collections in the past few years.

But for a lot of old—and new—fans, it’ll be the limited-edition plastic, solar-powered option that really counts. So, no time to debate the wisdom of TAG’s strange decision to restrict the numbers of the brighter, more desirable versions of the new, bigger Formula 1, if you’re in the market for an upgraded slice of iconic ’80s watch design, the race is on.