There probably isn’t a reader out there whose love of cars and racing wasn’t ignited as a youngster after they first whiffed exhaust fumes, hot oil and burnt rubber. And Richard Mille – the man behind the eponymous, high-end watch brand that creates unapologetically expensive ‘racing machines for the wrist’ – is no exception.

He was first seduced by the thrill of motor sport as a teenager back in 1966 when his father took him to the Monaco Grand Prix and he saw Bruce McLaren driving the M2B, the very first McLaren Formula 1 car.

“I shall never forget the terrifying noise from the Ford engine, which was actually designed for use in the Indianapolis 500 rather than F1,” Mille recalls.

The occasion made such an impression on the 15-year-old Mille that he hunted down that very car in 2011 to add to his stable of competition McLarens, which now numbers close to a dozen and includes F1 and Can-Am cars – among them the M7A which was driven by Denny Hulme, in 1968 and ’69.

Other cars he keeps at his home in Brittany include legendary F1 racers from the 1960s and ’70, such as the Matra MS11, BRM P160 and Lotus 78. One of his favourites however is the Alitalia-liveried Lancia Stratos in which Björn Waldegård won the Sanremo Rally in 1975 and 1976.

“It’s the one with which I started the collection and I still absolutely love it,” he says.

The fact that the aforementioned rarities represent just the tip of the very large iceberg that is Mille’s extensive collection makes one thing quite apparent: he is a dyed-in-the wool car guy. So it should come as no surprise that Richard Mille – the man and the brand – has been synonymous with the Le Mans Classic since its inauguration in 2002.

In fact, Richard Mille and the biennial celebration of what some still regard as being the best days of La Sarthe are inextricably and unequivocally bound together.

“For many years, Richard has been a close friend of Patrick Peter [founder of historic motor sport events firm Peter Auto],” explains Tim Malachard, the brand’s marketing director of the past 13 years. “In 2001 Patrick asked Richard to introduce him to a few watch companies that might be interested in backing a new event he was planning, the Le Mans Classic.

Mille’s personal Lola T70, which he and his son have campaigned. Here he is in action in 2018, sharing with Stellantis (PSA Group) chairman Carlos Tavares“The Richard Mille brand was only a matter of months old at the time and had made just a tiny number of watches – but Richard said, ‘What about my brand? Why don’t you have that as the official timing partner and main sponsor?’

“It was quite an ambitious suggestion, considering how little known the company was – but Patrick had faith in Richard, so they ended up establishing the Le Mans Classic together. And it and the Richard Mille brand have steadily developed and grown in parallel. There’s not been one without the other.”

Indeed, such is Mille’s love of motor sport – and endurance racing in particular – that these days he devotes much of his time to his role as chairman of the FIA Endurance Commission and has been instrumental in the development of the new Le Mans Hypercar category.

“Richard has been very heavily involved in getting that off the ground for the past four or five years,” says Malachard.

“As an independent voice, he has been able to use much of the experience he has gained as a businessman and entrepreneur to create a racing format that is both viable and fun for the fans. He has also been very proactive in getting teams to use their design departments to create specific identities for the cars rather than allowing aerodynamics to dictate that they all look very similar – that way people can recognise the different makes more readily on the circuit.”

Although Richard Mille (the brand) has a partnership with Ferrari that will give it a presence at the ‘modern’ Le Mans now that the marque has returned to top level endurance racing after half a century with the 499P, it is at the Classic where the prominence of the name stands out as principal partner.

“This year’s Classic is clearly going to be very special because of the centenary, and it really is going to be a celebration of motor racing since 1923,” says Malachard.

“There’s an aim to have more than 80 Le Mans-winning cars of the past gathered together to help tell the story of 100 years of endurance racing and, as a brand, Richard Mille will invite more than 400 guests to enjoy what promises to be a fabulous weekend.

“That’s an aspect of the Classic that we particularly enjoy, because it really is one of the world’s great four-wheel festivals and one at which people can get really close to cars that are otherwise rarely available to see.”

Among those cars will certainly be Mille’s own Lola T70 that he has raced at the Le Mans Classic on many occasions.

Having recently celebrated his 72nd birthday, Mille’s youngest son, 24-year-old Armand, now campaigns the car. Armand has been competing since he was 19 and has racked-up a highly respectable five wins and 14 podium finishes from 53 races thus far. The same holds true for Maxime, the son of his business partner, Dominique Guenat. The 30-year-old has participated in the Le Mans Classic since 2016 at the wheel of cars like the Lola T286 and Ford GT40 (with his father). Between 2019 and 2022 he won no less than 19 races. But perhaps the most telling indication of just how wedded to the Classic the Richard Mille brand really is can be seen in the fact that it is more or less the only event in the world for which it regularly produces a limited-edition watch.

Details of the 2023 centenary model were due to be released shortly after this issue hits the newsstands. Until then they will be kept tightly under wraps. However, Malachard hints that the watch – just 150 examples of which will be available – will feature a case made from milled quartz in the celebrated green and white colours of the Le Mans Classic (and seen in the 2021 LMC limited edition, the RM 029).

It should certainly make a worthy addition to the existing line-up of Richard Mille watches produced to mark past editions of the Le Mans Classic (see panel, right). And it seems a perfectly appropriate timepiece for a man who is a Lancia Stratos devotee.