Factor One, the luxurious bike ridden by ONE Pro Cycling this season
Factor One is the new aero race bike that’s the most similar to the Vis Vires. The front end has been reshaped and the fork is no longer twin-bladed, but it retains the distinctive ‘Twin-Vane’ down tube to help funnel wash from the front wheel through the frame rather than around.
“It definitely cleans up the wind that’s coming up off the wheel,” Rob Gitelis told BikeRadar. “It’s very easy to prove this. When you’re out on the bike you can see the dust coming up.” The twin vanes aren’t connected in the middle, which is very difficult to make – and around 40 percent more expensive to create the carbon moulds – but also very difficult to replicate.
It keeps the wheels from Black Inc, which Baden Cooke also runs. These will be spinning on Ceramic Speed bearings, sported the 80mm-deep carbon rims. Tyres are Hutchinson’s handmade Pro Tour tubulars, 24mm wide with dual-compound tread and polycotton casing.
There’s a new handlebar design, too. “We’re pretty confident that our new design has greatly reduced the frontal area of this bike,” added Gitelis. “You can see that we’ve hidden the Di2 box away from the handlebar, so we’ve been able to go very thin. Our Di2 junction box is underneath the water bottle on the down tube.”
Seating duties are taken care of by Prologo’s Nago Evo CPC saddle. It will come with three widths of handlebars and five lengths of stems.
The Factor One runs on Shimano’s Dura-Ace Di2 groupset, and uses standard Dura-Ace caliper brakes rather than the TRP mini V-brakes that the Vis Vires used. The rear brake is hidden out of the wind under the bottom bracket, while the front brake is mounted to the front of the fork rather than the rear.
Complete build weight for the new Factor One is 7.4kg, and it will cost just shy of $10,000 (we’ll add UK and Australian prices as we have them). There’ll also be a Factor One S, which loses the integrated fork and handlebars, for riders who want to spec their own handlebars. It will cost $7,650.
