The 70-year-old Italian cycling company Pinarello is all about going fast. (The great Miguel Indurain rode a Pinarello to five Tour de France victories.) So when the company entered the gravel space in 2018 with the Grevil, it bucked the trend of building a slack and comfortable adventure bike for hauling sleeping bags over the Continental Divide. Instead, Pinarello did what it does best: It built an aerodynamic machine designed to put riders on the podium. In June, Jessica Cerra did just that with the updated carbon Grevil F at Unbound, where she placed third in the 100-mile race.
Like all Pinarello bikes, the updated Grevil F has an asymmetrical frame—from behind you’ll notice the seat stays, chain stays, bottom bracket, and down tube are slightly offset. The left seat stay looks slightly higher and bulkier where it meets the seat tube, and there’s a slight downward rotation of the right seat stay. This choice was born from Pinarello’s philosophy that having the drivetrain on the right makes bikes inherently unbalanced because the chain acts only on the right side. The company adopted an asymmetrical frame for a symmetrical pedaling action with better efficiency in the saddle and an enhanced ability to respond symmetrically to stress on the bike.
More obvious to the casual observer, however, is the bike’s aerodynamic design, with a futuristic-looking seat post; a downtube with a flat back; a curvy, sculptural rear triangle; and an Onda fork that flares backward at the flap where the wheel slots in. These design tweaks reduce drag while dampening vibration. Add to those elements the bike’s complete internal cable routing and sublime new champagne color, and the Grevil F looks more suited to a museum than a muddy gravel road.
But Pinarello has managed a fancy form without sacrificing function. Grevil’s engineers must have spent a lot of sleepless nights configuring the bike’s geometry. What they came up with is a bike with a shorter reach (the horizontal distance from the center of the bottom bracket to the middle of the head tube) and a higher stack (the vertical distance from the center of the bottom bracket to the midpsoint at the head tube) that creates a more compact race-style “cockpit.” The cockpit is the configuration of your bike’s bars, stem, and seat post, and your particular arrangement will greatly influence how you feel on the bike and how it performs.
I measured the frame’s bottom bracket, and it sits even higher from the ground than a Cannondale SuperX, which is specifically built to stay clear of the rocks and roots that could bump against the frame during a cyclocross race. This tweak makes the Pinarello a more responsive ride with better clearance for obstructions. The frame shape also gives the rider more flexibility in wheel choice. The Grevil can run 700c-diameter road bike wheels with 25-mm tire widths; 700c-diameter cross wheels with tires between 32 and 50 mm; or 650b mountain bike wheels with up to 2.1-inch tire widths.