Italian brand Pinarello has launched the Dogma F8, a successor to the top-of-the-line Dogma 65.1 that will be ridden at this year’s Tour de France by defending champion, Chris Froome, and the rest of Team Sky.
Pricing is still to be confirmed. The frame is expected to be available in the UK in the next two weeks.
Pinarello also claims to have increased the rigidity of the bike and reduced the weight in comparison with the 65.1, though figures for how much lighter the bike is have not been released. This has been partially achieved through the use of a new generation Torayca carbon, dubbed T1100 1k.
Pinarello has stayed true to several design policies including a traditional Italian threaded bottom bracket, a 1in to 1 1/1in integrated headset and the Think2 cable routing system for electronic and mechanical groupsets. Pinarello has also stuck to its asymmetric carbon lay-up philosophy, which it claims evens out the differences in forces of the drive and a non-drive side pedal strokes.
John Pitman, Jaguar Land Rover’s Principal CFD Aerodynamic engineer, said Pinarello had wanted to develop an all-round bike, rather than one that was specifically labelled aerodynamic.
He said: “Pinarello wanted to maintain the handling characteristics of the 65.1… but we were given a fairly free rein to do an aerodynamic investigation of the frame.”
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Pitman explained that the striking shaped fork was initially based on the Bolide fork.
He said: “Essentially there is a sweet spot between having a too smaller gap between the wheel and the brake and likewise if you make it too big then obviously you’re increasing the frontal area.
“There is also a feature line on the fork – the out profile is not perfectly smooth, which also seems to keep the air attached slightly too.”
The aerodynamic investigation also revealed a series of interesting aerodynamic ‘discoveries’. Lowering the height of the seat tube water bottle makes less drag, so the F8 has two mounting positions for bidons, depending on how flexible the rider is.
Also, integrated brakes appear to make a negligible difference to drag coefficient, so Pinarello has stuck with standard brake mounts, which is a clear differentiator with other brands such as Trek, Lapierre, Merida and others, who have opted for Direct Mount and hidden brakes.
The F8 project was born at last year’s Tour when Pinarello and Jaguar – both high profile sponsors of Team Sky – signed an agreement to work together on the bike. It was unveiled today at Pinarello’s 2015 product launch near Treviso.
Sam started as a trainee reporter on daily newspapers in the UK before moving to South Africa where he contributed to national cycling magazine Ride for three years. After moving back to the UK he joined Procycling as a staff writer in November 2010.
