A race counter you advance yourself: Depancel’s clever calendar detour

Depancel’s Autosport Les 2 Tours d’Horloge looks ready to time a race. Two subdials, a prominent pusher and yellow accents make the association easy. But the important detail is what the wearer must do: press the pusher after each complete hour. This watch offers a manually advanced race-hour tally within a calendar display, rather than an automatically running 24-hour chronograph counter.

The distinction is central to its appeal. The Miyota 9122 remains a day-date-month automatic movement. At three o’clock, the familiar calendar indication gains a second scale extending the reading to 24 hours. Away from racing, the 1–12 markings serve the month display again. The mechanism has acquired another interpretation through markings and user action, rather than a new timing movement.

That makes this a useful example of interface design. A scale tells us what a hand means. Change the scale and the same moving part can represent something else—but the wearer must understand which role it is performing. The extra yellow numerals advertise the racing interpretation, while the calendar remains present underneath it.

Yellow also picks out the weekend on the opposite subdial and the central seconds hand. In the official photographs, these highlights connect otherwise separate regions of the face. The result has a stronger visual argument than simply printing an event logo on a standard watch. The association reaches into the way the dial is used.

There is a clear limitation. Forget an hourly press and the tally stops matching the event’s progress. It cannot independently establish a lap time, and a calendar corrector should not be mistaken for a stopwatch start button. For someone who enjoys interacting with a watch during an endurance race, that participation may be the attraction. For someone needing unattended elapsed-time measurement, the distinction matters.

The steel case measures 39 mm across, 46 mm lug to lug and 12.6 mm including the domed sapphire. Depancel specifies a 40-hour reserve and 50-metre water resistance. The edition is limited to 100 numbered watches, with a listed starting price of €795 including taxes on the French product page. MONOCHROME reports sales opening on 5 November 2026 at 16:00 Paris time; the maker’s current homepage labels it coming soon.

Source-based analysis, researched 4 November 2026. Photographs and specifications are supplied by Depancel; the launch schedule is attributed to MONOCHROME. No hands-on testing or independent timing measurements were performed. Our assessment concerns the display’s operating logic, not its performance on a wrist.