This article was produced in association with Pinarello
Which bike brand has won the most Tours de France? Any serious cycling fan knows the answer to that one – it’s Pinarello, with a total of 15 wins, followed by Peugeot with 10. But whereas the French company’s Tour wins were scattered between 1905 and 1977, all of Pinarello’s have been achieved in the modern era: the first was in 1988 with Pedro Delgado, then came four out of Miguel Indurain’s five consecutive wins and Telekom’s two with Bjarne Riis and Jan Ullrich, before the Italian company completely dominated the 2010s with Team Sky, later Ineos Grenadiers, and no fewer than seven wins by four different riders.
Pinarello’s palmarès are, of course, the envy of all the other bike brands. But it’s not just about the numbers: a sustained period of collaborating with the world’s best cyclists enabled the technological advances of each generation of the Dogma, first launched 22 years ago, that have repeatedly positioned it ahead of its rivals. The new Dogma F, unveiled in July, has that same race-winning DNA, but is the most evolved Dogma yet, thanks to meticulous analysis of all the performance data collected from Ineos Grenadiers riders in real racing scenarios.
In their search for improvements over the previous model, most manufacturers will target a weight reduction. However, Pinarello studied Geraint Thomas’s data from the 2022 Tour de France, measured the average energy he was expending and balanced that with potential savings he could make in different riding situations – on the flat, climbing and descending. Its engineers calculated that a 0.2 per cent improvement in CdA (drag coefficient) equates to a 175-gramme weight saving. In other words, minor improvements in aerodynamics are much more valuable than saving weight. The new Dogma F is 108 grammes lighter than the previous version, but based on its analysis, Pinarello’s primary focus was to reduce the CdA by 0.2 per cent. This was achieved by making minor yet crucial improvements using multiple computer-aided design iterations and hours spent validating prototypes in the wind tunnel.
1988 - Pedro Delgado, Spain, Reynolds (Image by Getty Images)
The down tube was completely redesigned in order to reduce its thickness, improving the frame’s frontal aerodynamic performance and contributing to the overall drag reduction. Additionally, it was rotated by 3.5 per cent to create a keel shape that improves the aerodynamic performance of the bottom bracket shell.
The head tube’s nose shape, first introduced with the Dogma F8 in 2014 and since widely copied, is eight millimetres narrower than before to improve frontal aero penetration. The Onda fork blades have been slimmed down and the thru-axle bolt on the right side is now integrated into the carbon so that there’s no exposed hole to separate the airflow. And the new Talon Fast integrated cockpit saves more watts, also allowing riders – via its natural twisted lever position – to hold an aerodynamic position in a safe and UCI-legal way.
1992/93/94/94 - Miguel Indurain, Spain, Banesto (Image by Getty Images)
Pinarello used brand-new M40X carbon-fibre in what it calls a groundbreaking layup with an exceptional tensile module that takes lateral stiffness to the next level – formulated after countless hours of testing on Pinarello’s X-Light models and on the bikes used by the Ineos Grenadiers.
“It is a continuous process,” explains Pinarello’s chief marketing officer Federico Sbrissa. “Ineos has a set of engineers and people working in the team who are closely in contact with our own development team. And Fausto plays a big role in this himself, as he always has done in the last 35 years.”
1996 - Bjarne Riis, Denmark, Team Telekom (Image by Getty Images)
Fausto Pinarello has unparalleled experience in working with world-class athletes to develop bikes for them, stretching right back to 1991 when he took over the responsibility of looking after the sponsored teams from his father, Giovanni. Banesto was the first major team that Fausto looked after when Pinarello took over sponsorship in 1992 and he found himself working directly with the great Miguel Indurain, who won the Tour de France five times between 1991 and 1995.
It was when Indurain decided to attempt the Hour Record in 1994 that Fausto Pinarello embarked on his most ambitious project yet – the radical Espada carbon fibre monocoque, which was developed in a groundbreaking collaboration with former Lamborghini engineer Marco Giachi and tested in a helicopter wind tunnel – it was many years before bike-specific wind tunnels existed. When Rouleur visited Pinarello in Treviso, Fausto said: “We took the Espada to Pamplona on August 15, so Miguel could test it at the Tafalla velodrome. After a couple of days there, we took it back to Treviso to make the final adjustments. Then on September 2, he set a new Hour Record: 53.04 kilometres.”
1997 - Jan Ullrich, Germany, Team Telekom (Image by Getty Images)
From that point everything changed for Pinarello. “That experience of the Hour Record taught us to keep aerodynamics and data at the centre of everything we do,” he said. “From 1994 on, we moved away from round tubing to a more aerodynamic profile. Even back when the frames were still made from metals, we didn’t just ‘crush’ them for the sake of aesthetics: research and data have always guided our decisions. For us, development has always been driven by performance.”
Pinarello started working with Team GB in 2008, with Sky also a sponsor, so when the professional road team was launched in 2010, Fausto Pinarello and his team were already fully aligned with Dave Brailsford’s now-famous marginal gains philosophy. Fausto showed Brailsford a 3D computer drawing of his company’s road bike project, the Dogma 60.1. He had just filed the patent for the asymmetrical frame, which was something completely new.
2006 - Óscar Pereiro, Spain, Caisse d'Epargne (Image by Getty Images)
“I told him that it could be the Team Sky bike and I offered him our total commitment to develop new products together. That happened at the end of 2008. We talked about it again in the spring and then in August 2009 he called to tell me they had chosen our bikes for Team Sky. I was on holiday when I got the call, but I returned to the office the next day and got straight to work. Our great adventure with Sky had begun.”
It took just three years for Team Sky to win the Tour de France for the first time with the Dogma 65.1 Think2 Bradley Wiggins rode in 2012, and Chris Froome gave it its second victory the following year. But 2014 was the year when the blueprint for the modern Dogma was properly established with the launch of the Dogma F8 – the eighth generation of the bike. This was the original aero all-rounder, this time developed with Jaguar, a Team Sky sponsor, and Dimitris Katsanis, the designer of the all-conquering UK Sports Institute track bike. The single frame capable of delivering exceptional performance on any terrain has been the watchword of the Dogma in every iteration since. Now, Pinarello’s competitors are reverting back to the concept of that single model, vindicating Pinarello’s decision of a decade ago.
2012 - Bradley Wiggins, United Kingdom, Team Sky (Image by James Startt)
As Sbrissa highlights, if one bike is to excel at everything from Spring Classics to Grand Tours, that means detailed and continuous communication with Ineos Grenadiers is all the more important – and it can throw up a few surprises too: “With the new Dogma F, the number one requirement from the team was more tyre clearance,” says Sbrissa. “They wanted to use wider tyres on the cobbles and the previous Dogma could fit 30mm, but it was tight.”
However bigger clearances can lead to reduced frame stiffness and less positive handling, so Pinarello needed to find exactly the right balance and Sbrissa is satisfied that they did. In fact, the Ineos riders were so impressed by the new Dogma F that they wanted to race it earlier than was originally scheduled. “The new bike was given to each rider selected to ride the Tour de France so that they had it a month before. But it was first ridden in the Switzerland Tour and the Dauphiné as well, because the improvement was so noticeable.”
2013/2015/2016/2017 - Chris Froome, United Kingdom, Team Sky (Image by James Startt)
Sbrissa continues: “From my point of view the biggest difference is to the front of the bike – the new fork rake from 43mm to 47mm, and the new headset. That’s my own opinion because it makes such a difference to the handling, which is really noticeable. Handlebar, fork, bearing set, that’s what I personally notice, but the pro riders will say it’s the rear stiffness of the bike, which is due to the new keel shape of the bottom bracket and and the new carbon-fibre, the M40X, which gives it a crisper feel, but it’s still very comfortable.”
Creating a Dogma capable of winning Grand Tours, yet which can also be enjoyed by the enthusiast, has always been a priority for Pinarello. As Fausto Pinarello says: “Making a bike that handles well means thinking of every kind of rider, not just the elites. If we can help you ride a bike a bit more calmly, allowing you to eat or put on your rain jacket without worrying about crashing, that innovation represents progress. A lighter bike, just taking a few grammes off the previous model, is only relevant to racers. And in the end, sticking with our philosophy we have managed to satisfy even a climber like Chris Froome.”
2018 - Geraint Thomas, United Kingdom, Team Sky (Image by James Startt)
All the signs are there that sticking with Pinarello’s philosophy will more than satisfy the next generation of Dogma riders, whether they’re WorldTour riders pushing themselves and their bikes to the limit, or enthusiasts taking their hands off the bars to don their rain jackets According to Fausto Pinarello, “Innovation is the result of a thought process, a habit, a way of working.” There’s no doubt these are winning ways.
2019 - Egan Bernal, Colombia, Team Ineos (Image by James Startt)
