Gabriel Leone wears a TAG Heuer Series 6000

In one scene from Senna, Netflix's six-part series on the life of Ayrton Senna, Gabriel Leone stands in a team garage in the full red Marlboro suit of the McLaren years, squared up against another driver whose own McLaren suit is tied at the waist, the TAG Heuer name stitched on Senna's sleeve beneath the patch for Boss. The series was made with the Senna family for about 170 million dollars, the most expensive Brazilian production ever made, and Leone, who carries the title role, is himself a TAG Heuer ambassador.

The watch the series gives him for his last seasons is the TAG Heuer Series 6000. Senna wore the brand off the track too, as one of its ambassadors, and Nicholas Biebuyck, TAG Heuer's heritage director, sourced the period watches for the show by working through old photographs, since Senna raced before drivers posted what was on their wrists. By Biebuyck's account the piece most tied to him was the S/EL chronograph, his daily watch from 1988 until 1993, and the Series 6000 is what he turns up wearing across 1993 and the early months of 1994, so the show carries both.

The Series 6000 arrived in 1992 as TAG Heuer's flagship, a more serious watch than the Formula 1 quartz models that had put the name on most wrists in the 1980s. It is water resistant to 200 meters and came in quartz as well as COSC-certified automatic chronometer versions, in steel or in steel and gold, with references such as the WH5211 and WH1115. A 200-meter dive-rated watch certified to chronometer accuracy was a curious thing on the wrist of a man whose work was done on dry tarmac, timed from the pit wall to the thousandth of a second.

In 1993 Senna drove his last season for McLaren. For 1994 he moved to Williams, into the seat the retiring Prost had left, and the Series 6000 is the watch of that move. He was killed at Imola on the first of May 1994, leading the race, in only his third start for the new team.