Factor Bikes

There is only so much you can learn from numbers. CFD tells us where to look, the wind tunnel tells us whether we are right, and controlled testing allows us to measure the differences. But eventually you have to put your design to the test. A real test. You have to have athletes with numbers on their backs compete on courses that refuse to behave like a laboratory.

Ahead of the ONE SP launch, we had several of our athletes across multiple high profile stages, testing this new expression of the dynamic platform. That started with the ONE. Whether at the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift, the Ironman 70.3 World Championships in Nice, and even the UCI Time Trial World Championships in Montreal, many of our athletes put the ONE SP to the test, and found the combination of agility and aerodynamic efficiency profoundly impressive.

Click the link in our bio to read more.

The launch of the ELARA completes the Factor gravel range as much as it complements the attributes of the other two members of the lineup, the SARANA and the ALUTO. Consisting of three specialist race platforms, the ELARA has been designed for Race Speed, ALUTO for Race Balance, and SARANA for Race Endurance. Each exists to answer a different performance question as gravel racing has evolved into increasingly specialised forms of competition.
 
Learn more about each bike and which is best suited to your gravel needs by clicking the link in our bio to the article where we have decoded our gravel bike range.

Understanding why the ELARA exists starts with understanding that gravel racing at the highest level has evolved into something that athletes from 2018 simply wouldn’t recognise. Fast gravel means exactly that. Aerodynamics matter, positioning matters, and a cutthroat approach to putting your adversary into the gutter feels much more reminiscent of WorldTour road racing.
 
That’s why the ELARA was needed and why it was inevitable that Factor would be the first to develop something so pure, so focused, so fast. It’s thanks not only to the feedback of our athletes like Magnus Bak and Romain Bardet, but also to the bold open-mindedness of our engineers that the ELARA is a totally new, utterly unique gravel racing bike.
 
Click the link in our bio to dive into the collaborative process behind its development.

ELARA is Factor’s pure gravel race-speed platform, developed for the fastest expression of modern gravel racing.

Its geometry takes cues from our road race bikes: a longer reach, reduced trail and lower bottom bracket create a position and handling character designed to feel precise, reactive and direct at speed.

The challenge was combining that response with clearance for tyres up to 57 mm without allowing the bike to become long, slow-handling or detached from its racing purpose. ELARA retains a compact 423 mm chainstay while accommodating the tyre volume required to carry speed across increasingly broken terrain.

That tyre clearance isn’t about turning ELARA into an adventure bike. Larger race tyres provide traction, impact control and greater tolerance for imperfect lines, allowing the rider to maintain speed when the surface becomes unpredictable.

The Black Inc SIXTY FOUR Gravel Wheelset was developed as part of the same performance system. Frame, wheel and tyre are considered together: the tyre influences traction, impact management and the aerodynamic environment; the wheel influences airflow, tyre behaviour, stability and control.

Aerodynamics were developed around that same reality. Rather than treating wide gravel tyres as an exception, ELARA’s frame, fork, wheels and front-end were developed around the tyre volumes and rider positions used in modern gravel racing.

Road-race urgency. Gravel race capability.

Factor ELARA.

Speed Over Everything.

“We race because racing puts everything under pressure: the bicycle, the rider and, importantly, the assumptions that led us to make the bike the way we did.” – David Millar, Factor Chief Brand Officer

What does it mean to be an engineering-led company? For Factor, it’s more than just the fancy tools and bright minds behind the designs. It means that engineering, not corporate forecasting, is behind every decision. Factor bikes are developed and manufactured to fill a performance need, not to follow a trend.

For every Factor design, the starting point is a performance problem rather than a date on a calendar. And it is essential that each product is raced in prototype to discover whether the design truly addresses the problem.

Click the link in the bio to read David Millar’s explanation on Factor’s performance engineering ecosystem.