- 7 hours ago
The Factor ONE is an aero road bike that looks like no other. Factor has some big claims about its new pro cycling aero bike including that it is faster than the Factor Ostro VAM, Specialized Tarmac SL8 and Cervelo S5 aero bike. We got to ride the new road bike ahead of its launch to see if it’s likely to be one of the best aero road bikes in 2026.
Aero bikes are set to dominate pro cycling in 2026 and the new Factor ONE has been designed with pro cycling bike fit in mind.
Aero bikes are set to dominate pro cycling in 2026 and the new Factor ONE has been designed with pro cycling bike fit in mind.
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00:008% faster than an Austro 2, 15% faster than a 2024 Cervelo S5, and 22% faster than
00:09a specialised
00:09SL8. That's what Factor says about his new race machine. This is a bike for everyone
00:15who says that modern bikes all look the same. This is the Factor 1.
00:20If you want to go faster on the bike, then you could squeeze yourself into a really tight
00:26skin suit, or perhaps wear some overshoes. You could even do some more training.
00:32But what happens once you've done all that, what is the quickest bike that you could climb aboard?
00:38Well, Factor reckon it's their new one. So let's go and give it a go.
00:54This is the Factor 1, the brand's all new sprint slash aero weapon. And we already know that it's
01:01like nothing else on the planet. We already know that it's tested very fast in the wind tunnel.
01:07But what we don't know is what it's like to ride. So in today's video, I'm going to find out.
01:12Now, if you're a bike nerd like me, then this is probably the most exciting thing that you've seen
01:18in about the last five years. And whereas most bikes, I feel like I have a pretty good idea of
01:25how they're going to ride before I actually ride them because I've either ridden the previous
01:29generation or the geometry chart looks like just about everything else. With this, I'm not too sure
01:36because it looks absolutely wild. It looks like nothing else currently on the market.
01:43Now, we've just had a bit of a presentation from Graham Shrive, who is the design engineer who came
01:48up with this concept over the last five to 10 years. And I was expecting him to talk an awful
01:55lot
01:55about aerodynamics. And what he actually talked about was geometry. So let's dive a bit deeper into that.
02:03Well, as we talked about during the presentation, there's a variety of external inputs that we
02:08included in the bike design or design philosophy, and then as well as our own internal inputs. So
02:13you have things that we've learned and experienced and feedback from our teams. And the external things
02:18are some of the emerging trends like shorter cranks, larger diameter tires, and you know, the progressive
02:24riding fit. And you know, the accumulation of that, when combined with what we're seeing from the
02:29world tour as well, which is preponderance of zero offset posts and long and very long stems.
02:34And in the case of this bike, we decided to not necessarily pursue the trends, but to synthesize what
02:41we've seen riders doing and try to give them the platform that best accommodates where the sport is
02:46clearly going. And we've talked a lot about how world tour has influenced this bike. So who is this bike
02:53for? Because I'm not a world tour pro. Is it for riders like me? Or should I be looking at
02:59the
02:59Austrovan for example? I think it depends on how dedicated you want your kind of machine per se to
03:05be, you know, and where your goals are for the year. You know, if your goal is to, for example,
03:10be a
03:11breakaway artist at a local criterium, and your training rides are full gas all the time, maybe
03:15you're a rider that has limited time, and they go out and they just crank for two or three hours,
03:19and their races emulate that, then I'd say yes, it's definitely a bike for you. You know,
03:23we don't preclude people from having a more conservative traditional fit with this bike,
03:28but we certainly empower you to have a really wild fit. You know, you can go as far as zero
03:32setback,
03:33and you know, 150 stem, and it's well within the range of safe use. You shouldn't have a terrible
03:39handling experience with it. We think it's actually going to be pretty good. And you know, I certainly
03:44would say that in general, if a rider was looking at the two bikes, if they find themselves
03:48looking for more forward position or less setback, and they find themselves wanting to be more
03:53aggressive, then for sure, I would say go for the one. And if they're finding that, you know,
03:58in fact, they want a setback post on their bike, maybe a shorter stem, you know, probably
04:02Ostro is a good place for them to stay. We've seen some pretty big brands, the likes of
04:07Specialized and Trek go towards a one race bike approach. And I think I'm right in saying that you
04:13have a three race bike approach. How come you've gone for that rather than down the one bike
04:20to do it all? You know, as a brand, we're in a position where we can do that. And we
04:25don't
04:25really worry about SKU counts. We don't really worry about inventory overhang because we more
04:30or less work in a just in time fashion. And you know, we really are racing dedicated and we see
04:35where racing is going. And this is just going to give racers another weapon, just like the Ostro does for
04:39some riders. And just like the Ostro does for some riders. And you know, from our side, again,
04:44we're trying to listen and take it in. And you know, in the future, if we see that one or
04:48the
04:48other of those categories has completely died out, then we'll probably eventually just discontinue
04:52pursuing that. But we're kind of always eye on the prize. And you know, I think there's a clear
04:56trend in the industry right now that aero bikes are back. I don't think it should be a surprise for
05:00anybody. And we saw it coming as well as other brands did. And you know, we sort of just kind
05:05of
05:05jumped all in. I think what other brands necessarily didn't necessarily want to take
05:10the risk with was doing an aero bike while taking a more progressive approach to the geometry.
05:14And in our case, you know, because of the way we're structured, you know, we're sort of winner
05:19take all and we're happy to take those risks that other brands don't. You are going to be allowed to
05:23race this next year, aren't you? So the UCI aren't going to put any funny business and say,
05:28no, that's too radical. We certainly hope not. You know, we work really hard to be collaborative
05:33with the UCI. You know, they had a really good look at this design early on. There was quite a
05:38bit of back and forth and certain aspects of it that we actually modified the design before we got
05:42to that prototype stage. It's in the process right now of the final certification, but based on the
05:48CAD and the frame shapes and the current rules, it is acceptable. I mean, you never know in the
05:53current situation if they may change some rules. There's a lot of discussion going on about that right
05:58now. And from our side, you know, I think we take a bit of a unique perspective in the industry
06:02is that
06:02we just try to be collaborative. We don't like working against people. We want to work with them.
06:07And one of my fundamental tenets is that when you get to the race, it's time to race. It's not
06:11time
06:11to wonder if your bike is going to be acceptable or not. So we always try to work really closely
06:16with
06:16them. They preview our designs, they give us initial feedback, and then we work to implement that in a
06:21respectful fashion. So my sincere hope is it continues to be usable, but we've seen in the case of other
06:27bikes
06:27where something that was legal yesterday is not legal today. So, you know, that would be, you know,
06:32a real bummer for some people. But as a brand too, we're committed to try to support our riders.
06:37So if something happens outside of their control, you know, we'll work to mitigate that with them,
06:41you know, provide them with new forks or, you know, help them with offset costs or, you know,
06:45something along those lines. But yeah, we really hope that it should be here for a while and, you know,
06:51we'll see where things go from here. So we'll start with just a whistle stop tour of what this bike
06:56is all about. And as I said, a lot of it is quite geometry focused. So we'll start with the
07:02seat tube
07:03because that is pretty radical. So it's 76 degrees, which is just about as steep as I've ever seen on
07:10a
07:10road bike. The Ridley Noah Fast comes close, but most other road race bikes, you're looking at more like 72
07:17to 73 degrees. Now, what this does is puts your weight further over the cranks. And this is a
07:25trend that we've seen more and more happening in the world tour. And Graham was pretty clear with why
07:32they've designed the bike like this. And it's because all the world tour pros are using wider
07:37tires, shorter cranks, and trying to get their weight more over the bottom bracket. The result,
07:43you might think is that you're then going to need a really long front end because you're further
07:48forwards. And it does indeed have a longer top tube. However, the bar is then mounted here,
07:56whereas your steerer tube is here. And that means that you can get that extra length without having a
08:02really, really long stem. In fact, this bike doesn't really have a stem. What it does have
08:08is this kind of winged bar design. And it's available in quite a few different lengths and
08:14also two different heights. So one of them is a more gull wing sort of design, and that has an
08:20extra
08:2020 millimeters of rise. You can fit a five mil, a 10 mil, or a 15 mil spacer under there
08:26to give you
08:27a total of 35 millimeters of fit adjustment, which actually, I think that's really pretty good for a bike
08:34of this design. The question that I wanted to answer by coming out here to Girona, what's this bike like
08:41to ride? Well, my initial impressions are it's actually surprisingly normal. And I mean that in the
08:48politest possible way. I was really worried that this bike would be aero at all costs and that the
08:56compromise would be the handling, but it's not. It actually, you can get on it straight away and the
09:04position feels normal. It feels natural. And on some of the twisty descents that we've done, it feels
09:09pretty confidence inspiring. And what that means is I think a lot of bike brands are going to follow suit
09:15with this steeper seat tube angle. Did you know that in the world tour, the average stem length is 130
09:22mil.
09:22Some teams, the average is more like 140, 150, and this sort of counteracts that by mounting this wing
09:31bar design further forwards means that it's got a really stiff front end. If you lean on the bars
09:38like that, there is barely any discernible flex. And that's not the case with the Colnago Y1RS that
09:46has quite a flexy front end. And I kind of found that that meant the front end was just never
09:53really
09:54where you wanted it. In fact, that was probably the biggest surprise of the Colnago was how, how floppy
10:02the front end felt. This feels a lot more like the Ridley Noah fast. And that is a good thing.
10:08What that
10:09stiffness does mean is that it, the whole front end is pretty stiff. This is not an endurance road bike.
10:18It is an out and out race machine and fair play to factor. They've now got three race bikes in
10:24their
10:24range. The O2 van for climbing, the Ostro van, which is more all rounder, and now this for sprint stages
10:31and flat days, or is it because actually this build weighs 7.4 kilograms and the pro team version
10:41apparently weighs 7.2. What that means is Graham, the design engineer reckons that the team will want
10:48to use this for not just the flat stages, but in the mountains as well, especially for the lighter,
10:54smaller riders. So what this could mean is it's basically like a Cervelo S5 where Jonas Vingegaard has
11:01used that in the mountains. He uses it for everything. So what will it cost you? Well,
11:06Factor says that the frame set complete with cockpit and seat post will be priced at £6,899.
11:12That's £6,599 or $6,900. Complete bikes all come with Black Ink 62 carbon wheels and are available
11:22with SRAM Force, SRAM Red, Ultegra or Shimano Dura-Ace. And if you're in the US or Europe,
11:27there's also a Campagnolo Super Record 13 option. Those builds start from £10,899,
11:35that's £10,499 or $10,899 and top out at just over £13,000.
11:43As for colours, there's four available and some of you will be relieved to hear that there are far
11:48more subtle colours than the one that I've been riding. This one is Blush. There's a black on black
11:54colourway known as Onyx Black. A Nimbus Grey which has the letters of 1 printed in large white
12:01lettering all over to create this kind of camo effect. And then this one which is called Silverstone.
12:07That one surely takes inspiration from a Mercedes Formula 1 car. Let me know which your favourite
12:12is down in the comments below. But if you're buying a loud bike, surely you go for the loud colour
12:18scheme,
12:18yeah? But what I want to know is what do you think of this bike? Do you think it's too
12:24radical?
12:25Let me know in the comments below, make sure you're subscribed and we'll see you next time.
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