In May we told you we had chosen five frames from the thirteen in the F1 Optical range, and that each one would carry a name — not a number — drawn from a moment in a Formula 1 weekend. We said the names would come at launch.
The launch has happened. So here are the names.
We are writing this on the weekend of the Hungarian Grand Prix — the last race before the sport breaks for the summer. It felt like the right moment. A race weekend is not one thing. It is a sequence of them, each with its own tension, its own kind of person. That is how we thought about these five frames. Not five versions of the same idea, but five different moments, five different people at the paddock, five different reasons to put a frame forward.
Here is where each one sits.
Briefing
Plant-based cellulose acetate. €195.
Sunday is won on Thursday, in a room with no windows.
The briefing is where the race is actually decided — strategy, tyres, the three scenarios nobody in the grandstand will ever see. It is the least glamorous part of the weekend and, quietly, the most important.
We gave the name to the most universal frame in the capsule: a clean rectangular silhouette in plant-based cellulose acetate, the tier most people start with. It does not announce itself. It is the frame for the person who does the thinking.
Apex
Plant-based cellulose acetate. €195.
The corner has one perfect line through it. Everything else is a compromise.
The apex is the point of commitment — brake a metre later than you meant to and it is gone. There is no negotiating with it.
Apex is the aviator of the capsule, a double-bridge silhouette in the same plant-based acetate as Briefing — the softer shape, for the person who follows Formula 1 not for the noise but for the precision of the racing line.
Pole Position
Monel with recycled Motor Valley carbon fibre. Titanium nose pads. €245.
Saturday afternoon. One lap. Nothing to hide behind.
Pole is the cleanest thing in the sport — no strategy, no traffic, just the lap and the clock. It is the moment the engineering has nowhere left to hide.
So we gave the name to the tier where the engineering becomes visible: Monel metal, with carbon fibre reclaimed from Italy's Motor Valley in the temples, and titanium nose pads. This is where the F1 construction stops being a story and starts being structural.
Paddock
Monel with recycled Motor Valley carbon fibre. Titanium nose pads. €245.
The race is two hours. The paddock is the other four days.
Everything that matters happens here before anyone straps in. It is the part of the weekend the cameras mostly miss — and the part the people who live inside the sport would tell you is the real one.
Paddock shares Pole Position's engineering — Monel, Motor Valley carbon fibre, titanium — in a rectangular geometry. Same construction, different face. For the person who prefers structure to softness.
Aero
Rimless titanium with recycled carbon fibre. €245.
The fastest part of the car is the part you cannot see.
Aerodynamics is invisible engineering — the shape of the air, worked out in a wind tunnel months before anyone drives. You never see it. You only see what it makes possible.
Aero is the most technically refined frame in the capsule, and the lightest thing we make: rimless titanium with recycled carbon fibre, no frame at all around the lens. The temples carry the colour. The rest disappears. It is the frame for the person who prefers what is engineered well over what is visible.
Five moments, three tiers, one line
Read them together and the shape of the capsule is clear.
Two frames in plant-based acetate — Briefing and Apex — the entry to the collection, the everyday tier.
Two frames in Monel and Motor Valley carbon fibre — Pole Position and Paddock — where the racing engineering becomes something you can hold.
One frame in rimless titanium — Aero — the technical high point, the one built to disappear.
Each is available in three colourways. Each takes every lens type: single vision, progressive, transition, mineral sun, and blue-light. Each is designed and handmade in England, under official Formula 1® licence.
And each is included in UV Club — two pairs a year, prescription or sun, lenses included, remade free if the fit is not right. Buying them separately would cost you considerably more.
The other eight are still here
We said in May that curation is not exclusion, and we meant it. The five are the editorial line — the frames we would point to if you walked into the studio and asked where to start. But the rest of the F1 Optical range is named and live too, on the website and in the studio, for anyone who wants to look past the curated five.
If you are in Brescia, the capsule is on display at UV Studio, Via Fratelli Dandolo 5/7. You can try all five, and the eight beyond them. Coffee is on us.
If you are elsewhere in Europe, the US, or anywhere in our shipping zone, they are all online now — with the names, the stories, and the tier each one belongs to.
The names took a while. We think they were worth waiting for.
