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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.
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8% faster than an Austro 2, 15% faster than a 2024 Cervelo S5, and 22% faster than a specialised SL8
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That's what Factor says about his new race machine. This is a bike for everyone who says that modern bikes all look the same
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This is the Factor 1. If you want to go faster on the bike, then you could squeeze yourself into a really tight skin suit
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or perhaps wear some overshoes. You could even do some more training
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But what happens once you've done all that? What is the quickest bike you could climb aboard
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Well, Factor reckon it's their new one. So let's go and give it a go
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This is the Factor 1, the brand's all new sprint slash aero weapon and we already know that it's like nothing else
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on the planet we already know that it's tested very fast in the wind tunnel but what we don't
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know is what it's like to ride so in today's video i'm going to find out now if you're a bike nerd
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like me then this is probably the most exciting thing that you've seen in about the last five
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years and whereas most bikes I feel like I have a pretty good idea of how they're going to ride
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before I actually ride them because I've either ridden the previous generation or the geometry
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chart looks like just about everything else with this I'm not too sure because it looks absolutely
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wild it looks like nothing else currently on the market now we've just had a bit of a presentation
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from graham shrive who is the design engineer who came up with this concept over the last five to
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ten years and i was expecting him to talk an awful lot about aerodynamics and what he actually talked
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about was geometry so let's dive a bit deeper into that well as we talked about during the
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presentation um there's a variety of uh external inputs that we included in the bike uh design or
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design philosophy and then as well as our own internal inputs uh so you're things that we've
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learned and experienced and feedback from our teams and the external things are some of the
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emerging trends like shorter cranks, larger diameter tires and you know the progressive
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riding fit. You need an accumulation of that when combined with what we're seeing from the World
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Tour as well which is preponderance of zero offset posts and long and very long stems and in the case
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of this bike we decided to not necessarily pursue the trends but to synthesize what we've seen
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riders doing and try to give them a platform that best accommodates where the sport is clearly going
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and we've talked a lot about how world tour has influenced this bike so who is this bike for
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because i'm not a world tour pro is it for riders like me or should i be looking at the austro van
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for example i think it depends on how dedicated you want your kind of machine per se to be you know and where your goals are for the year You know if your goal is to for example be a breakaway artist at a local criterium
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and your training rides are full gas all the time, maybe you're a rider that has limited time and
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they go out and they just crank for two or three hours and their races emulate that, then I'd say
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yes, it's definitely a bike for you. You know, we don't preclude people from having a more
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conservative traditional fit with this bike, but we certainly empower you to have a really wild fit
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You can go as far as zero setback and 150 stem, and it's well within the range of safe use
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You shouldn't have a terrible handling experience with it. We think it's actually going to be pretty good
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And I certainly would say that in general, if a rider was looking at the two bikes
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if they find themselves looking for more forward position or less setback
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and they find themselves wanting to be more aggressive, then for sure I would say go for the one
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and if they're finding that you know in fact they want a setback post on their bike
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maybe a shorter stem you know probably Oshiro is a good place for them to stay
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We've seen some pretty big brands the likes of Specialized and Trek go towards a one race bike
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approach and I think I'm right in saying that you now have a three race bike approach
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How come you've gone for that rather than down the one bike to do it all
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You know as a brand we're in a position where we can we can do that and we don't really worry
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about SKU counts. We don't really worry about inventory overhang because we more or less work
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in a just-in-time fashion. And, you know, we really are racing dedicated. And we see where racing's
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going. And this is just going to give racers another weapon, just like the Astra does for
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some riders and just like the O2 does for some riders. And, you know, from our side, again
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we're trying to listen and take it in. And, you know, in the future, if we see that one or the
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other of those categories has completely died out, then we'll probably eventually just discontinue
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pursuing that. But we're kind of always eyeing the prize. And I think there's a clear trend in
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the industry right now that aero bikes are back. I don't think it should be a surprise for anybody
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And we saw it coming as well as other brands did. And we sort of just kind of jumped all in
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I think what other brands didn't necessarily want to take the risk with was doing an aero bike
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while taking a more progressive approach to the geometry. And in our case, because of the way
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we're structured, we're sort of winner take all and we're happy to take those risks that other
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brands don't. You are going to be allowed to race this next year aren't you? So the UCI aren't going
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to pull any funny business and say no that's too radical? We certainly hope not. You know we work
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really hard to be collaborative with the UCI. You know they had a really good look at this design
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early on. There was quite a bit of back and forth in certain aspects of it that we actually modified
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the design before we got to that prototype stage. It's in the process right now of the final
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certification but based on the CAD and the frame shapes and the current rules it is acceptable
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I mean, you never know in the current situation if they may change some rules
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There's a lot of discussion going on about that right now. And from our side, you know, I think we take a bit
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of a unique perspective in the industry is that we just try to be collaborative
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We don't like working against people who want to work with them. And one of my fundamental tenets is that
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when you get to the race it time to race It not time to wonder if your bike is going to be acceptable or not So we always try to work really closely with them They preview our designs they give us initial feedback
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and then we work to implement that in a respectful fashion. So my sincere hope is it continues to be usable
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but we've seen in the case of other bikes where something that was legal yesterday is not legal today
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So, you know, that would be, you know, a real bummer for some people
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But as a brand, too, we're committed to try to support our riders. so if something happens outside of their control you know we'll work to mitigate that with them
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you know provide them with new forks or you know help them with offset costs or you know something
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along those lines but yeah we really hope that it should be here for a while and you know we'll see
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where things go from here. So we'll start with just a whistle stop tour of what this bike is all about
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and as I said a lot of it is quite geometry focused so we'll start with the seat tube because
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that is pretty radical so it's 76 degrees which is just about as steep as i've ever seen on a road
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bike the ridley noah fast comes close but most other road race bikes you're looking at more like
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72 to 73 degrees now what this does is puts your weight further over the cranks and this is a trend
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that we've seen more and more happening in the world tour and graham was pretty clear with why
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they've designed the bike like this and it's because all the world tour pros are using wider
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tires shorter cranks and trying to get their weight more over the bottom bracket the result
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you might think is that you're then going to need a really long front end because you're further
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forwards and it does indeed have a longer top tube however the bar is then mounted here whereas
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your steerer tube is here and that means that you can get that extra length without having a really
8:03
really long stem in fact this bike doesn't really have a stem what it does have is this kind of
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winged bar design and it's available in quite a few different lengths and also two different
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heights so one of them is a more gull wing sort of design and that has an extra 20 millimeters of
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rise. You can fit a 5mm, a 10mm or a 15mm spacer under there to give you a total of 35mm of fit
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adjustment which actually I think that's really pretty good for a bike of this design. The question
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that I wanted to answer by coming out here to Girona, what's this bike like to ride? Well my
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initial impressions are it's actually surprisingly normal and I mean that in the politest possible
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way i was really worried that this bike would be aero at all costs and that the compromise would
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be the handling but it's not it actually you can get on it straight away and the position feels
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normal it feels natural and on some of the twisty descents that we've done it feels pretty
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confidence inspiring and what that means is i think a lot of bike brands are going to follow
9:15
with this steeper seat tube angle Did you know that in the World Tour the average stem length is 130 mil some teams the average is more like 140 150 and this sort of counteracts that by mounting this wing bar design
9:32
further forwards means that it's got a really stiff front end if you lean on the bars like that
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there is barely any discernible flex and that's not the case with the colnago y1rs that has quite
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a flexy front end and I kind of found that that meant the front end was just never really where
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you wanted it. In fact that was probably the biggest surprise of the Colnago was how floppy
10:02
the front end felt. This feels a lot more like the Ridley Noah Fast and that is a good thing
10:08
What that stiffness does mean is that the whole front end is pretty stiff. This is not
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an endurance road bike it is an out and out race machine and fair play to factor they've now got
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three race bikes in their range the 02 van for climbing the ostro van which is more all-rounder
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and now this for sprint stages and flat days or is it because actually this build weighs 7.4
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kilograms and the pro team version apparently weighs 7.2 what that means is graham the design
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engineer reckons that the team will want to use this for not just the flat stages but in the
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mountains as well especially for the lighter smaller riders so what this could mean is it's
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basically like a Cervelo S5 where Jonas Vingegaard has used that in the mountains he uses it for
11:03
everything so what will it cost you well Factor says that the frame set complete with cockpit and
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seat post will be priced at £6,899. That's €6,599 or US$6,900. Complete bikes all come with
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Black Ink 62 carbon wheels and are available with SRAM Force, SRAM Red, Ultegra or Shimano Dura-Race
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And if you're in the US or Europe, there's also a Campagnolo Super Record 13 option
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Those builds start from £10,899, that's €10,499 or $10,899, and top out at just over £13,000
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As for colours, there's four available, and some of you will be relieved to hear that there are far more subtle colours than the one that I've been riding
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This one is Blush. There's a black-on-black colourway known as Onyx Black
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a nimbus gray which has the letters of one printed in large white lettering all over to create this
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kind of camo effect and then this one which is called silverstone that one surely takes inspiration
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from a mercedes formula one car let me know which your favorite is down in the comments below
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but if you're buying a loud bike surely you go for the loud color scheme yeah but what i want to know
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is what do you think of this bike? Do you think it's too radical
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Let me know in the comments below. Make sure you're subscribed and we'll see you next time
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