Turkish Grand Prix & Is Rolex Still a Status Symbol?
Mercedes wishing the kept Bottas, Widening of the standings, Rolex cost analysis
Turkish Grand Prix
This weekend was another F1 race - a wet one to say the least. With a wet track from start to finish, drivers saw the most success on the green wet tires - which are capable of evacuating 30 liters of water a second at 300kph. For those unfamiliar, these are the slicker wet tires. The blue rain tires are capable of evacuating 85 liters of water a second at 300kph.
In qualifying, Hamilton came in first, but due to an engine penalty, he was forced to drop 10 positions to start in 11th. Bottas started in 1st, with Verstappen and Pierre Gasly in 2nd and 3rd.
Overall, the majority of the race was pretty uneventful. Aside from simple passes, and Gasly clipping the back of Alonso in the first turn - leaving him with a 5 second penalty, there wasn’t much more drama until the 34th lap. Hamilton, having moved up into 5th, made an effort to pass Red Bull’s Sergio Perez. Catching a slipstream and fighting him along the straight and subsequent corners, Perez ultimately continues to hold onto 4th over Hamilton.
Following the first visits to pit lane, Bottas falls back to second, but is able to pass Charles Leclerc of Ferrari promptly with his new tires and Leclerc on 46 lap old tires. After being passed, Ferrari decides to change Leclerc’s tires, dropping him down to 4th and seceding 2nd to Verstappen, with Hamilton in 3rd. Hamilton, yet to change tires, goes into pit lane and came out in 5th. The final pass of the race came in lap 52 of 58 when Perez was able to brake later and catch the inside position on Leclerc.
Mercedes Bottas held on to win the race, followed by Red Bull’s Verstappen, and Perez. Hamilton finished in 5th. This extended Verstappen’s lead over Hamilton in the standings, which now look like this:
Rolex As A Status Symbol
A question I would like to propose is “Is having a Rolex still a status symbol?”. While browsing one of my favorite Reddit subreddits r/Rolex, I came across a thread that had users post the age they bought their first Rolex, the cost of it, as well as their net worth at the time. Reading through the responses, it got me thinking if having a Rolex really shows your worth anymore. Many of the responses said things like “Probably in debt”, “spent every dollar in my bank account”, “30-60k”. While there were a few responses of hundreds of thousands to upwards of 7 figures, the majority were of the ladder.
I did a little more research and found a few sites that have gathered statistics on the average Rolex owner. Statista.com seemed to show quite the spread in monthly incomes when it came to Rolex owners, they found the majority made 9-10k net monthly household income, but the results were so close, it seemed somewhat inconclusive to me. However, if this were to hold true, pretax that is ~140k/year. According to dqydj.com, that would put you in the top 20-25% of earners in the United States. With this being the case, is having a Rolex really a status symbol? I don’t think so. Similar to that of cars, it just takes having the passion for them and be willing to allocate money towards it.
What to look forward to:
September CPI Data comes out Wednesday. I will cover how the car market has changed since last month.
Soon I plan on talking about how Tourbillon watch movements work
How you can own part of a luxury watch with the introduction of NFTs in the crypto space.