Senna’s watch before his death is returned to the manufacturer – 01/28/2024 – Sport

Last week, Mike Vogt, former marketing manager at Tag Heuer, went to the brand’s headquarters in La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland, to deliver the prototype of a watch that he had kept for 30 years.

It was the wristwatch developed in 1994 in collaboration with Brazilian Ayrton Senna, three-time Formula 1 world champion, shortly before his death during that year’s San Marino Grand Prix.

Senna wore the watch during the race weekend, but gave it to Vogt shortly before the fatal event.

Since then, Vogt has kept the watch that the pilot gave him under lock and key, putting it on his own wrist only once — right after taking it out of a security safe to hand it over to Tag Heuer.

“I never really wanted to use it,” he explains. “Somehow it wouldn’t seem right, it would even seem disrespectful.” So, two years ago, after speaking with Frédéric Arnault, Tag Heuer’s CEO at the time, Vogt began the process of delivering the watch prototype to the brand’s museum. On Friday (19), he handed it over to Tag Heuer’s wealth director, Nicholas Biebuyck.

The watch will now take pride of place in a special Senna exhibition that also includes one of the driver’s racing helmets and other special and limited edition Senna watches that the brand has released over the past 30 years.

Vogt, now 60, was a 28-year-old Formula 1 fan when he landed his dream job at the brand. Soon after, he became marketing manager. “The quartz crisis in the 1970s and 1980s caused an entire generation of people my age to leave the watch industry because companies weren’t hiring,” he says.

“But then brands began to realize that professional marketing needed to be incorporated into the business, and I became one of several hungry young managers at Tag Heuer during what proved to be an incredible period in the industry — not least for me , because I was asked to form a team to handle marketing, public relations and sponsorship and to develop and implement a strategy.”

Part of this involved aggressively promoting the brand in Formula 1 circles, which meant doing everything from ensuring Tag Heuer banners were hung in the best places for optimal television exposure to hosting retailers, customers and journalists during weekends. race week.

“It was also essential to develop personal relationships with the pilots,” says Vogt. “This included providing watches, in return for which they happily chatted to our customers during exam weekend.”

It was through this network of contacts that Vogt met and befriended Senna in 1992, when the Brazilian was driving for McLaren — which, around a decade earlier, had merged with Mansour Ojjeh’s Tag Group to begin a partnership that continues until today.

In 1985, Tag acquired the Heuer brand, which, logically, sponsored the McLaren team, with which Senna won the Formula 1 World Championship in 1988, 1990 and 1991 — before transferring to Williams for the 1994 season in exchange salary of US$20 million (R$98.3 million).

“Tag Heuer was a sponsor of McLaren, but when Senna went to Williams, it was very important for us to keep him,” says Vogt.

The former marketing manager recalls that, at the time, both Senna and his manager, Celso Lemos, were very interested in developing the Senna brand to ensure that he would have an income after retiring from racing. They came up with the slogan “brought to perfection” and created Senna’s famous “S” logo, which appears on the watches.

“Our idea was to make a special watch based on the new 6000 Series of high-end models that were officially launched in 1994, and Senna suggested that the dial should have a checkered flag pattern and a red Senna S and that the watch should be equipped with your preferred type of leather strap,” says Vogt.

A prototype was duly manufactured and supplied to Senna, who used it in the fateful weekend of the San Marino Grand Prix, in Imola.

The day before the race, Senna met with Vogt to discuss the proposed watch series. During the conversation, Vogt explained that as much as he wanted to buy one immediately for himself, Tag Heuer rules prohibited employees from doing so.

“It was at that moment that Ayrton took the prototype off his wrist, handed it to me and said he wanted me to keep it.”

After Senna’s death, there were suggestions that the watch project should be abandoned. “But I felt like I made a commitment to him to make the watch a success,” says Vogt. “So, we came up with an elegant solution: make a thousand pieces in each of the three sizes and donate part of the profits to the Ayrton Senna Institute, which his family, led by his sister Viviane, created six months after his death.”

The watches produced differed from the original design by featuring the S applied in silver, instead of red. Since then, Tag has released around ten different editions dedicated to Senna, while examples of the original Series 6000 models are now sold on the vintage market for up to £4,000.