Pinarello Unveils the new Dogma F8

Good to hear. I was hoping they’d make the new one at least 15% more asymmetric.

I wonder how long until we see copies on Alibaba.

Darryn, I agree. I was hoping for 14% more asymetry but 16%…. wow! It works. I cut the little finger of my left hand and achieved a whopping 20%. Now I do everything faster.

16% more asymmetric, and 1600% more fugly. That thing is hideous. It’s like they mated a Cannondale Slice with a bad Chinarello, only… uglier.

What about (improved) comfort? Massive backtriangle doesn’t look promising for that…

@plankton – Of course it won’t support discs. This is a pro-level road racing bike, where discs are currently not permitted. If that changes, then they will change design. Until then, only marketing machines like Specialized are making disc-specific “race” bikes.

@Flip: It might be that the UCI doesn’t allow discs in pro races, but the fast majority of sales are to amature racers (and even more to non-racers) who can run discs in their racers if they want to. In fact, I don’t imagine a lot of anything is sold to pro-tour racers: probably paying them to use their stuff or at least giving it away.

Back to the bike at hand: I think it’s a big improvement style-wise over the previous super-curvy Dogma designs.

Aside: pretty amazing to see Fromme, Wiggins and co. using Stages powermeters. I guess this finally answers my long unanswered question, “What is the user of sperate left-right power readings?” Answer: “Not much!”

Great company, solid design, solid management behind it…just never cared for all the squiggly stuff on seat stays and fork, and am glad to see this refined look. I’ll never be able to afford one but this just went on the “aspirational” win the lottery list.

The rear wheel/seat tube intersection is tricky because you are managing side gusts, the airflow coming forward on the tire, and rider comfort. Sounds like they found a happy medium with the Kamm tail design there.

I still think Pinas are ugly. Their forks and seat stays look like somebody left the mold in the microwave for a few minutes too many.

Aerodynamic…. Seriously, reading about x% improved aerodynamic here and there in ads and in reviews, and understanding that the bike manufacturers are trying to sell their bikes twice or more to the same suckers, I finally have to say… Until my a** gets more aerodynamic, or when I stop wiggling about on my bike when I ride, or until the day that I finally manage to achieve a 100% aerodynamic positioning of my body over the bike, none of the frame’s aerodynamics will matter. Seriously. Asymmetric, optimal-metric, f***-o-metric (sorry for my straight forwardness) has, as I see it, no (none like 0) impact on my speed as long as I still have not achieved a 100% perfect body performance, which at my age (+35) will never happen.
If anyone can correct me in my assumptions, please correct me. Also, spending +1000-3000 bucks on getting a new frame to shave some weight of a 100 grams here or there… I bet I can shave of more weight way cheaper by just spending a couple of minutes in the toilet before my rides.

frippo,
nope, youre wrong. no matter how you slice it, compared to riding a standard frame exactly at that moment, you on a more aerodynamic frame are faster.

I have a 2014 dogma think 2 with the squiggly fork, di2 dura ace and enve 3.4 wheels. I love it! In fact the pinarello with enve wheels and dura di2 is about the same price as specialized sworks Tarmac and canondale with similar groups and wheels. I’m, 49, out of shape, but I love to ride, so I got the dogma, kind of overkill for my speed, but hey I have friends that spend $20k on home theater equipment and sit on their butts on the weekend, at least I’m out riding. I might get one of the f8s, only dilemma is if the disc version will show up shortly.

@Frippolini: Hopefully and probbably the aerodynamics of the bike is made with wind from different angles in mind. You almost always see the wind from some angle in the 180 degree halv circle in front of you. Exception is when climbing were wind actually can push a little. If the areodynamics is made to work with those different angles there is no need to have controll over the wind direction. There is a benefit from the frame shape regardless the wind direction more of the time than it is not. Your thinking that unless some parameters are not 100% the rest doesn’t matter is not making sense? Of course a faster rider will benefit more from aero frames but that doesn’t make a less fast rider without all of that benefit. He or she will just benefit a bit less, that’s all. Question you would ask is of the significans for your kind of rider? Is the benefit noticable on a clock if we could test it beyond the many different changes we normaly see in real world riding. That is the reason to use controlled environment. The controlled environment doesn’t make the tests flawed, they just avoid the ever changing environment in real world but does not avoid testing different wind direction. That is they provide controll so the testing can be choosen to ones wish. They give choice so the messurements can be made. The physics of the frame will still be there when meeting the wind from real wind coming from whatever angle it comes from for the moment. When wind direction changes it will hit the frame from another angle, an angle also made to get low drag from wind.

@frippolini

I think what you want to know is how much drag is from the bike and how much drag is created from the rider (you). From what I’m reading, it seems that you believe the body’s drag is so large that it makes the drag of the bike insignificant. IE: bike drag = 10, body drag = 100. Total drag = 110. Reduction of 10% in bike drag, total drag = 109.

I’m just as curious as you are now haha.

The speeds won’t tell you anything about aerodynamic benefits to the peloton. TT speeds will tell you a little bit about improvements, but even then the speeds won’t tell the full story. What the speeds don’t tell you are the race tactics for a given rider, the meteorological conditions, the conditioning of the riders, and a number of other factors. Simply put, there are too many unconstrained variables to do a reliable analysis.

With that said, physics doesn’t lie. There is a benefit to reducing drag and thus reducing the power required to go a specific speed given a specific set of initial conditions. Whether or not someone thinks the benefits are too small to be worth the added expense of aero bits is a matter of opinion, not science.

@ Psi squared,
What I challenge is not somebody’s opinion, but the idea that an increase in a frames aerodynamics has a real world impact (measured in time or speed).
I agree physics don’t lie, and if you read my previous comments I clearly say that I don’t challenge the theoretical benefit of a more aerodynamic frame. Did you read my comment above, was there something about it that was unclear?
Since you don’t agree with my proposal to look at Tour-de-France statistics (as proposed above): what scientific measurement could you recommend as a way to understand if the “measured-in-a-wind-tunnel-benefit” has any real world significance? I’m really interested in hearing your constructive contribution to this, or are you of the opinion that there are just too many variables and as such this can not be measured?
Thanks.

@ Psi Squared
Thanks for the explanation, I appreciate it.
Also, respect for providing such an accurate explanation. 🙂
Thanks. I believe I understand where I’m left standing with this discussion, and I feel totally Ok with it and the logical explanations behind it.
I’ll try to search for the article you mentioned.
Best,

Yes, no doubt it seems the best aerodynamic result for a bike till now. Alone. But does only this perfect bike design really makes some difference considering the drag of human body? I mean, more then 0,5% of all the drag for the set man+bike? A top biker will get some considerable gain beyond his own skills?