Paris-Roubaix bike choice: Why Modern Adventure opts for durability over aero gains

It helps that bike supplier Factor is no stranger to the cobbles of Paris-Roubaix, with almost a decade of experience at the race. Before linking up with Modern Adventure for 2026, they supplied bikes to AG2R and Israel Premier Tech, and Simon Clarke won the cobbled stage of the 2022 Tour de France aboard a Factor bike.

The question, then, wasn’t whether Modern Adventure had a Roubaix-ready bike at their disposal, but rather which one they should choose. Twelve months ago, IPT raced Paris-Roubaix aboard the Ostro VAM aero bike, but back in 2024, the squad had opted for the Ostro Gravel, partly in anticipation of an especially muddy edition of the race.

At first glance, the Ostro VAM aero bike might have looked the most obvious choice for 2026, but every team has its own objectives and its own requirements. This was a key consideration when Factor Chief Engineer Graham Shrive sat down to talk Roubaix equipment choices with Modern Adventure manager George Hincapie.

The line-up for Sunday’s race will be composed almost entirely of Paris-Roubaix neophytes, and as befits a squad in its first season, their objectives will be relatively modest. The aim isn’t to compete with Tadej Pogacar and Mathieu van der Poel for first place, but to gain the treasury of experience that comes only from making it all the way to the Roubaix velodrome.

“We’d love to have as many of our riders as possible finish our first Paris-Roubaix; that’s the main goal,” Hincapie said. “If we could get one or two riders in the top 20 in the process, that would be a dream scenario for us.”

Factor quickly ruled out the very aero ONE due to its stiffness, but they also advised against the Ostro VAM given the experience and objectives of Modern Adventure’s roster.

Instead, as Factor Chief Engineer Graham Shrive explained to Domestique, they recommended the Factor Monza equipped with Black Inc FIFTY EIGHT wheels, believing that it was the set-up best suited to surviving the kind of carnage Modern Adventure’s riders were likely to encounter on the rocky road to Roubaix.

“We won the Roubaix stage at the Tour with the Ostro VAM, and we’ve had multiple top tens at Roubaix in years past, so it can definitely survive the race,” Shrive told us. “But the problem is if you fall on it or it gets run over by a car, the likelihood of it breaking is a lot higher than with the Monza. And if you look at Modern Adventure, getting riders to the finish is the main objective, so I talked to George about it pretty pragmatically.”

The Monza, launched last year, is a bike essentially aimed at ambitious amateurs who need a machine that can endure double duty in racing and training, as well as surviving the occasional crash. “The Monza is really meant for the way that people actually ride their bikes,” Shrive told us, though he politely pressed back against the notion that its deployment in Paris-Roubaix was influenced by marketing considerations.

The final call still rested with Modern Adventure, but Factor’s recommendation was based on the Monza’s durability. The greater quantity of lower modulus, less stiff and more ductile fibres makes it more likely to emerge undamaged from a crash, and that was a key consideration given Modern Adventure’s targets and their current circumstances.

Their support car will be towards the rear of the race convoy, and unlike the bigger WorldTour outfits, Modern Adventure will not be able to deploy small armies of volunteers with spares to stand on the roadside. Those considerations – obvious inside the race but unseen by those watching at home – all fed into the recommendation of the Monza, though Shrive stressed that it was a discussion rather than a dictate.

“If they had the goal to place a guy in the top 10, then I would have said, ‘You might want to have the Ostro VAM for that guy,’” Shrive said. “I also asked George if their strategy was to gain TV time by putting a guy in the early break. Because then maybe he should be on the ONE, but then he would need to do a bike change because otherwise his life was going to go to hell in a handbasket when he hits the first sector… So it was a conversation.”

Modern Adventure tested the various options at their disposal during their recon of the Paris-Roubaix route last month, and the conversations between the team and their bike supplier arrived at a consensus. The Monza was the way to go.

“It’s much more compliant on the cobbles with the wider tyre clearance, but still super responsive when you’re on the tarmac,” said Hincapie, who saw all sorts of equipment innovations in his own Paris-Roubaix career, which extended from 1994 to 2012. “We tested the bikes on a recon a few weeks ago and everyone was super content, so that will be our frame of choice.”

Inevitably, any conversation about bike choice and setup in the 2020s comes back to numbers and aerodynamics. Aero bikes are used with increasing frequency these days, even in mountain stages, but Paris-Roubaix is a race that challenges the mind as well as the body, and a race that poses all manner of practical considerations.

In purely numerical terms, the Monza carries a ‘penalty’ of around 2.5 watts compared to the more aerodynamic Ostro VAM, but both Factor and Modern Adventure reckoned that its durability meant it was a price worth paying. Every equipment decision at Paris-Roubaix is a trade-off of sorts.

Or as Shrive put it: “A 2.5-watt aero penalty moving from the Ostro VAM to the Monza doesn’t put the rider into a non-competitive position, but a mishap leading to a broken frame will 100% put them out of contention.”

The Trouée d’Arenberg is a great many things, but it’s certainly no wind tunnel.