The TAG Heuer Formula 1 was bright, colorful, and exceedingly popular when it debuted in 1986 – but its true origin story has never been told. In a conversation with vintage Heuer enthusiast Jeff Stein, Eddy Burgener, who designed the watch, reveals to us the surprising backstory of how the Formula 1 got its colors, size, shape, and name. 

Please tell us about your family background and early years, and how you joined the watch industry.

I was born in Neuchâtel in 1954 and raised in La Chaux-de-Fonds, the cradle of Swiss watchmaking. Both of my parents worked in the watch industry, my father worked in watchmaking supplies, and my mother was a setter working at home at the workbench.  My mother's father was also in the industry, as he stamped watch cases.

Having grown up in this region and in this family, it was natural for me to envisage a career in the watchmaking industry. After high school, I enrolled in the School of Applied Arts, where I learned jewelry making. At that time, there was no school that offered watch design. I also learned artistic drawing, sculpture, pure creation, and research into original forms, which involves pure creation around a given theme, for example, creating a table clock with no constraints. But of course, it was only natural that I would become interested in watch design.

How did you move from your training in art and jewelry to the watch industry?

I graduated from art school in the Spring of 1973 and soon turned to watchmaking, doing various internships in watch case factories to create designs and prototypes. I was most interested in learning about the manufacturing process and the "secrets" of manufacturing.  

I realized that in designing watches, the designer must be pragmatic and know what can be produced profitably for industrialized watches. I felt that innovation and proposing new ideas was important, but this had to be within the limits of what could be produced. I'm sure that we will get to this when we discuss the design of TAG Heuer's Formula 1 watches.

What were your positions in the watch industry between finishing art school and your work on TAG Heuer's Formula 1 watch?

I held a series of jobs in the watch industry. I worked as a designer for Nepro Watch in La Chaux-de-Fonds, Certina in Granges, and Buler in Longeau before joining Roventa-Henex in 1980. Located in Tavannes and Biel/Bienne, Roventa-Henex was a specialist in watch design and development, as well as manufacturing watches on a private-label basis, and I worked as a designer for all the new watch developments for the company's customers.  

This covered a wide range of styles, from very feminine and fancy watches like Gucci and Fendi to sporty watches like TAG Heuer, as well as more conventional lines.

Although I've always enjoyed designing all styles of watch, I think I've always had a soft spot for sporty watches like TAG Heuer.

Can you tell us about your first work for TAG Heuer?

Heuer was a big customer of Roventa-Henex, and in 1982, as a Roventa-Henex employee, I designed their new Heuer 2000 Series watch. The design brief for this new collection was relatively simple. In the late 1970s, Heuer started out with traditional diving watches (like the Rolex Submariner), and they did well with these watches, but they wanted something bolder and more modern. They had no particular criteria for aesthetics, but insisted on technique, water-resistance, comfort on the wrist, and the grip of the rotating bezel.

That's when I decided to create protuberances on the bezel so that when wearing diving gloves, you'd have a better grip. But it wasn't easy because, at the time, we didn't know how to create relief by stamping; stamping was very basic. It, therefore, took several attempts to achieve the desired result. The 2000 Series was manufactured by Roventa-Henex for TAG Heuer and was very successful, with Heuer offering a full range of watches and chronographs. The 2000 Series was a revolutionary collection for TAG Heuer and remains in their catalog to this day, renamed as the "Aquaracer" over 20 years ago.

What were your next projects for TAG Heuer, after the 2000 Series?

The 3000 Series was introduced in 1984 and it also came from a relatively simple design brief. The new series was not supposed to compete with the 2000 series but to offer greater choice for the brand. I took a different approach, with a dodecagonal (12-sided) rotating bezel and a slightly more aggressive but thinner case. 

The Executive, introduced the following year, was designed with the precise aim of making a diver's watch flatter than usual, with a more elegant look. We achieved a flatter stack by creating a rotating bezel "sandwiched" between the case and an upper bezel. Neither the 3000 Series nor the Executive collection matched the success of the 2000 Series, but they were novel designs. 

In 1984, Heuer introduced the Super Professional, which was a complete updating of its "deep dive" watches. This new watch was inspired by the bezel of the 2000 collection -- with the protuberances on top -- but it was far more imposing and robust. The case is of monocoque construction, housing massive seals, with a socket on top to ensure water-resistance to 1000 meters. Notice that the top and bottom areas of the case cover the ends of the bracelet, to provide additional protection, as we would see on the future Formula 1. 

Roventa-Henex assembled all these watches for TAG Heuer -- the 2000 Series, the 3000 Series, the Executive, the Super Professional, and later the Formula 1.

Now, let's talk about the Formula 1. What did Heuer want you to create with the new Formula 1 watch?

To understand the brief for the Formula 1 design, it's important to understand Heuer's catalog and the market that Heuer wanted to target with its new watch. With the 1000, 2000, and 3000, Heuer had a nice range of watches for diving and other sports, but something was missing – color!!  

With the Formula 1, we were trying to create a new style of watches for American surfers, divers, and other young folks heading for the beach. They were wearing big Casios, with digital displays, lots of buttons, and complicated modes. While most of the Casios for watersports were black or stainless steel, Casio was adding color to many of these waterproof models.

So the brief from Heuer, in Spring 1985, was to create a new watch that was fun, colorful, and young. Think of the bright surfboards and the clothes that the surfers were wearing. But, of course, Heuer was strong in dive watches and the new watch also had to have the requisite diver functions – good water-resistance, notched unidirectional rotating bezel, and legible hands, even in the water or bright sun. Affordability was also important, especially in competing with the Casio models for young buyers.

Building such a watch in 1986 wasn't as simple as it might seem. To get the colors, the case had to be synthetic, but making a diver's watch from synthetic materials at the time and offering water resistance to 200 meters was simply unheard of. It was a fun watch but also a revolutionary watch!

So how did you solve this problem of creating a bright, colorful dive watch, using mid-1980s technology?

Roventa-Henex would be responsible for the design and development of the new watch and would also manufacture it, so I was tasked with finding the right partners to make it. I enlisted two companies for the project: MRP SA and R. Montavon.

MRP SA had produced the cases for many of Heuer's early dive watches (1000 Series) and I had worked with them on the 2000 Series and 3000 Series, as well. MRP would handle the stainless steel elements of the case and ensure the required water-resistance.

Perhaps the third partner, R. Montavon, had the most challenging role of the three. They had expertise in plastic and rubber injection and overmolding, and they were responsible for what would be distinctive elements of the Formula 1 -- the synthetic cases and bezels.

The three firms met to tackle critical manufacturing aspects to produce an entirely new style of casing that would meet the requirements of the brief. We added fiberglass to the plastic base material to increase its hardness and stability, and we incorporated a separate steel container to house the movement and guarantee watertightness of 200 meters. The synthetic part of the case would be overmolded on the stainless steel container, with TAG Heuer marketing this as its "twin combination" case.  

The synthetic rotating bezel proved to be particularly challenging. There would be notched teeth inside the synthetic bezel, but the crucial question was whether to use a steel spring, which might cause rapid wear on the teeth or to develop a synthetic spring. Giancarlo Dal Busco, the technical director of R. Montavon, suggested that the spring should also be made of synthetic material to avoid wear and tear on the mechanism; however, there was still the question of what sound the bezel would make when turned. Mr Dal Busco took out his comb and ran a fingernail over the teeth, and it was clear that the sound was good!  It's funny how something as simple as the sound of running a fingernail over the teeth of a comb could result in a solution for what we sought for this bezel action.    

At the time, it was a great first to create a case comprising a round steel container with a screw-down case back, crown tube and crystal, and a 25% fiberglass-reinforced synthetic coating enabling many bright colors to be realized, with an all-synthetic, notched, unidirectional turning bezel. The Swiss watch industry had never seen anything like the Formula, a bright, colorful dive watch.

It has been stated and repeated many times that the Formula 1 was TAG Heuer's answer to the Swatch watch, which – as an inexpensive, colorful watch – had revolutionized the watch market in the early 1980s. Did the wild success of the Swatch watches affect your approach to the Formula?

Clearly, the Formula 1 watch had to be attractively priced, but it had to be a traditionally manufactured watch with a repairable and removable movement, which was not the case with the Swatch. Even the suggestion that Swatch affected the colors didn't enter into the equation, since the aim was to compete with Casio with the younger audience, so the Swatch really didn't affect the design brief for the Formula 1. Perhaps the Swatch showed that people wanted lighter, colorful watches, that were fun to wear, but TAG Heuer wanted an entirely different type of watch.

Formula 1 was a serious timepiece that could be worn in the water or at the beach; this was very different from the Swatch, which was not intended to be usedas a watch for watersports. It is great to see so many Formula 1 watches still looking good and running well in 2025.

In 1986, TAG Heuer became a sponsor of the McLaren Formula 1 team. We sometimes hear that the Formula 1 watch was related to TAG Heuer's entry into motorsports or even that the shape of the Formula 1 watch was inspired by a Formula 1 racecar. Is this fact or fiction?

Sorry, but this is another piece of fiction! We began working on the new watch in Spring 1985, and if my memory is correct, we called this project the "diving watch for young people." The design brief did not mention racing or Formula 1, but the name was added to the watch during the design and development process.

The name Formula 1 was added in relief at the bottom of the case, in the area that covers the strap. In my sketches from 1985, you can see that the bottom of the case is marked "location for brand name." Of course, by the time the watch was introduced, TAG Heuer had entered the racing world, and "Formula 1" was the perfect name for it.

The bright colors and durable construction would appeal to young divers and drivers, so, what began as a colorful dive watch was soon marketed as a sporty racing watch.

Please walk us through the design of the first Formula 1 watch? How do you describe the design/shape of the case? And the bezel, dial, and hands?

At the time, Tag-Heuer's dive watch (Plongeur) collection was made up of the "classic" Series 1000 collection and the more recent 2000 Series collection with its raised lugs on the rotating bezel. For me, it was necessary to innovate on the Formula 1 watch and bring a different look to the watch to bring out the color in the best way possible, while incorporating the essential qualities of a diver's watch.

After a few sketches, I decided to go for a case with lug covers, hiding the ends of the bracelet at 6 and 12 o'clock, making the case more attractive and giving it greater strength. As we discussed, we had to use a synthetic material to get the colorful cases we wanted, and this new shape would be stronger than a case with traditional lugs.

The homogenous surface of the bezel highlighted the strong colors, while the slight depressions gave the bezel a certain rhythm. The dial, with its minute track encapsulated in a colored zone and four-quarter inlaid indexes recalling the TAG Heuer logo, also added graphic innovation and celebrated the beginning of TAG Heuer.

As for the hands, we made no aesthetic change from Heuer's lineup of dive watches, continuing with the style used in Heuer's other dive watch collections. These hands provided excellent legibility and were familiar to divers and surfers.

The Formula 1 watches and chronographs had a unique style of strap – very long, with grooved markings indicating where it could be cut. What was the thinking behind this strap?

The straps were made of injected PVC and always matched the color of the bezel.  We made them extra long so that surfers and divers could wear the Formula 1 watches with wet suits, but they were marked with V-shaped grooves so that they could easily be cut to a standard length for wear on the wrist.

These V-shaped grooves resembled the base of the TAG Heuer logo,, and the "keeper" also mirrored the logo's shape. TAG Heuer was very proud of its new logo, so we incorporated its shape across the dial and strap.

Can you comment on the sizes of the Formula 1 watch? In the 1980s, TAG Heuer often made four sizes of dive watches – for example, 42 mm, 36 mm, 32 mm, and 28 mm. Did TAG Heuer consider offering the Formula 1 watch in a larger size?

At the time, watches were generally smaller than today, and the Formula 1 was no exception. The size of the original model was 35mm on the horizontal axis and 40mm on the vertical axis (lug-to-lug), while the bezel had a diameter of 34.5mm. We also offered a 28-millimeter version for female divers and swimmers, but even these smaller watches offered the same construction and performance.

How was the Formula 1 watch received in the market when TAG Heuer introduced it?

The Formula 1 watch was a great success from the start, being especially popular among young men and women. Most of the initial marketing was in the United States, and the success spread from there. With the success of the initial collection, we quickly moved on to more synthetic and all-steel versions and the first chronographs, and I designed all these models.

Can you tell us more about the first Formula 1 chronographs? Why did you use such a peculiar layout, with both the chronograph minutes and seconds displayed on smaller recorders and the center seconds hand always running? And why are so few of them still working today?

The movement fitted to the first Formula 1 "chronographs" was produced by Roventa-Henex. It was, in fact, a pseudo chronograph, as its base movement was the ETA 902.101, with a three-hand watch surrounded by a chrono module developed by Conseil Rey in La Chaux-de-Fonds. On most traditional chronographs, the chronograph seconds hand is mounted on a center pinion, and the "running" seconds hand is on a smaller recorder. On the movement that Roventa-Henex developed for the Formula 1 chronograph, the central seconds hand is part of the base movement and was, therefore, not part of the chrono. The chronograph seconds are counted in one of the small counters.

This explains why the first Formula 1 chronographs were equipped with two batteries, one for the base watch movement and one for the chronograph module. This movement was not very reliable, but its use was chosen for price reasons and the lack of availability of proper chronograph movements at ETA, which was the only manufacturer of quartz chronograph movements at the time.

Speeding ahead to the year 2024, can you comment on the design of the TAG Heuer x Kith collaboration Formula 1 watches that we saw last year?

It was a pleasant surprise for me to see the original Formula 1 watches offered again by TAG Heuer, and these watches brought back many good memories. It was interesting that these Kith collaboration watches used the same tooling as the original watches, with a relatively small size.

It would have been a beautiful evolution to have seen a larger diameter adapted to today's tastes. I think the Formula 1 design could work well in a larger size, between 38 and 42mm, as long as it keeps its freshness and an attractive price, which was also an aim of the original models.

It was also satisfying to see the enthusiasm of today's collectors for this watch as if it no longer had that youthful freshness. I enjoyed the fact that 40 years later, this design was especially appealing to younger enthusiasts, the same crowd that we were targeting back in 1986.

I know that after your work for TAG Heuer, you have stayed busy as an independent designer. I won't ask you to recap the last 35 years, but can you give us a highlight and tell us what you are currently working on?

I met Barry Cohen in 1994, shortly after he launched Luminox, a watch brand equipped with light sources based on a new technique. He was looking for a designer to conceive and improve the aesthetics of this watch. I began creating watch designs for Luminox, resulting in a long collaboration as the brand brought its specialized illumination technology to the consumer market and became a great commercial success. This was also the beginning of a great friendship that continues to this day. 

The story continues today with my design work for Barry's new ProTek brand, which still uses tritium light source lume technology. We collaborated to create the aesthetics for ProTek watches, taking up some of the old codes I had developed for Heuer on the 2000 line but giving the new brand a different character, more in keeping with the very tactile brand. A new adventure begins, a friendship endures, and it feels like this is just the beginning.

For additional information about the early Formula 1 watches, see Jeff Stein's Formula 1 Reader and visit TAG Heuer online. 

Thanks to Justin Bennett, at tag1000diver.com, for providing one of the TAG Heuer 2000 Series watches for photography.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.