Style Edit: Why the Richard Mille RM 035-03 Automatic Rafael Nadal is a technical marvel

Sep 18 , 2025

Spanish tennis legend Rafael Nadal wears the Richard Mille RM 035-03 model that carries his name. Photo: Handout

Past Richard Mille models have seen partnerships with sports stars like Formula One’s Alain Prost and Fernando Alonso, and sprinting superstar Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce

For timepieces boasting the supreme technical sophistication of those made by Richard Mille, the high-performance world of professional sport is an ideal source of inspiration. The boundary-pushing Swiss luxury watch brand has sought out partnerships with some of the most iconic stars of the sporting world, from Formula One legends Alain Prost and Fernando Alonso, to track superstars like Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce. None, though, has been more creatively fruitful and mutually fulfilling than Richard Mille’s long-term collaboration with tennis great Rafael Nadal.

Tennis legend Rafael Nadal has worked with Richard Mille since 2010. Photo: Handout

Together, they’ve come up with a pair of collections that have consistently pushed boundaries and broken new ground. There’s RM 027, the series of ultralight, ultra-durable tourbillons that the Spanish ace proudly sported on his wrist while playing since the first one was released in 2010. And there’s the RM 035 series – the collection known as “baby Nadals” – which takes the same tricks and technologies, and pushes them in all sorts of interesting directions.

The Spaniard has worn Richard Mille RM 027 and RM 035 series watches on court and off. Photo: Handout

Take the fourth and newest addition to the latter collection, the RM 35-03 Automatic Rafael Nadal. It’s innovative in its look, in its movement, and in the cutting-edge materials used in its construction.

The new RM 35-03 Automatic Rafael Nadal. Photo: Handout

The watch’s most groundbreaking feature is undoubtedly its “butterfly rotor”, an innovation that took no less than three years to perfect and test. Previous Richard Mille watches feature movements offering variable rotor geometry, but the version in the RM 35-03, a patented Richard Mille original, is a rotor that puts the wearer in charge, allowing them to interact directly with its geometry as well as control its winding speed, like engaging sports mode on a car.

The butterfly rotor is a major innovation at the heart of the RM 35-03. Photo: Handout

Two grade 5 titanium arms with weights mounted on them convert the wearer’s movement into kinetic energy, winding the watch. Press a push-piece at 7 o’clock, though – ahead of moments of intense physical activity, for example – and the weights disengage, halting the winding. Haptic feedback means that change can be felt on the wrist, while the winding indicator at 6 o’clock shows whether winding is engaged or not.

Richard Mille has a proud history of innovation in materials science. Photo: Handout

As you’d expect from Richard Mille, the RM 35-03 is also a marvel of materials science. Its case comes in various combinations of blue and salmon Quartz TPT, an intensely hi-tech material that’s intimately intertwined with the history of the maison. It’s made by slicing silica into filaments no wider than 45 microns, then stacking them and weaving them together at high temperature to create a material that winningly combines lightness, durability and a beautiful, grainy aesthetic.

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