Factor Bikes

Factor Bikes is a high-end British bicycle manufacturer. Founded in 2016 from an offshoot of a performance car engineering company by Rob Gitelis, a former professional cyclist and a specialist in the manufacture of carbon fibre equipment, the company has supplied road bikes to UCI World Tour, UCI Women's World Tour and Pro Continental teams, and currently produces the Factor ONE, which it claims is "the fastest UCI-legal road bike in the world". The Norfolk-based engineering group Beru F1 Systems, founded in 1993, released a radically designed bike in 2007 called the Factor001, costing £25,000. This was a training bike that Bike Radar magazine claimed "leaps ahead of anything the cycling world has even envisaged" and was called "the most advanced bike ever made". Five years later the company, now renamed BF1 Systems, produced a second bike, this time in conjunction with the luxury sports car maker Aston Martin. Called the One-77, this model had several elements in common with the Factor001, and was limited to 77 individual bikes, with the company making them – Factorbikes, a subsidiary of BF1 – using seven staff taking two weeks to build each one. They were equipped with a "motorsport-derived data logging system" and other kit not found in road bikes at the time. In 2013, BF1 developed another advanced carbon-frame bicycle, called the Factor Vis Vires. The company contacted Rob Gitelis, who had experience building carbon bike frames in Taiwan for companies such as Cervélo, to help develop the bicycle and create a brand. In 2016, the brand Factor was launched at the Tour Down Under in Australia.