Pinarello F7 Ultegra Di2 review

Pinarello has overhauled its road bike range, dropping the Prince and Paris models, replacing them with new F-Series and X-Series bikes respectively.

The Pinarello F-Series especially will pique interest, offering a cheaper entry point to owning a Pinarello race bike. The new Pinarello X-Series, meanwhile, is Pinarello's latest endurance road bike.

The F-Series is said to be good enough that the top-spec frameset will be supplied to every professional race team Pinarello sponsors (barring Team Ineos-Grenadiers, which will continue exclusively with the flagship Dogma F).

Based largely on the Dogma F, the F-Series sees a near-identical geometry married to a Toray T900 carbon layup in two of the three models (the F9 and F7), while the ‘entry-level’ F5 uses a cheaper, T700 carbon blend.

It all sounds very appealing – near-Dogma F performance, but in a more accessible package.

Pinarello invited me to the Syncrosfera sports performance complex in southern Spain – a popular haunt for professional teams and riders to base their training camps – to get a first taste of the new F-Series.

In summary, aboard an F7 equipped with a Shimano Ultegra R8170 Di2 groupset, Pinarello would appear to have created a very competent, well-balanced race bike.

Pinarello F-Series highlights

• 950g claimed weight for the Toray T900 frames (size 530)
• 990g claimed weight for the Toray T700 frames (size 530)
• Dogma F-inspired geometry
• Truncated aero ‘flatback’ tube profiling
• Clearance for tyres up to 30mm wide
• Proprietary 1.5in steerer and aero seatpost
• 3D-printed internal titanium seatpost clamp
• Compatibility with electronic and mechanical groupsets
• TiCR internal cable routing
• Italian threaded bottom bracket
• A Shimano 105 Di2-equipped bike costs from £5,250 / $6,000 / €6,150

Pinarello F7 first impressions

At a glance, the new F7 – or any of the other F-Series bikes – could easily be mistaken for the Dogma F (or its forebears as far back as the Dogma F8).

But the Dogma link is more than skin-deep – the frame for the F7 and its siblings features an almost identical geometry compared to Team Ineos’ race bike.

Pinarello says if you strip the paint away from most race bikes of a given breed, you’d have difficulty positively identifying many of them.

Whether that’s true or not is debatable – personally, I think I could tell apart many bikes if stripped of paint – but there’s no doubt Pinarello’s distinctive approach to bike design continues with the F-Series.

Especially in the stealthy black-on-black colour my test F7 comes in, it cuts a purposeful figure.

It’s gratifying to see key elements of the Dogma F on show in the F-Series bikes, too.

The partial shrouding of the down tube bottle, the Onda fork complete with dropout wing and the asymmetrical rear triangle all put me in mind of a ‘full-fat’ Pinarello race machine, rather than a slimmed-down facsimile.

The 3D-printed titanium seatpost clamp carried over from the Dogma F might seem an inconsequential detail, for example, but there’s no doubt that it makes the seatpost assembly extremely tidy.

While not specifically optimised for either ultimate aero performance or the lowest possible weight, the F7’s frame looks – for want of a better phrase – ready to race.

The Toray T900 carbon frame may not feature the more exotic T1100 1K material of the Dogma F, but Pinarello says the ‘downgraded’ material still offers the properties required to produce a compelling all-round race-ready ride.

Crucially, it’s also cheaper.

Although the F9 comes with top-tier groupsets, I think the Shimano Ultegra Di2 and SRAM Force eTap-equipped F7 is more likely to be the level most riders will find most compelling, especially given the finishing kit is almost identical between those bikes.

Weight aside, Ultegra Di2 R8170 and Force eTap AXS offer incredibly similar performance to their pricier siblings. So unless you can’t get those few hundred grams out of your head, I think this is where the F-Series makes most sense.

Pinarello F7 first ride impressions

Having never ridden the latest Dogma F, it’s impossible for me to compare the two directly.

That said, with Pinarello’s competition geometry at the heart of the F7, I’m told I could jump from one to the other and feel the same handling characteristics (save for the Dogma F’s more expensive carbon layup, and stiffness-to-weight benefit that confers).

On that score, the F7 feels every inch the all-round race bike it’s designed to be – not quite full-throttle aero racer, but not quite a precision climber’s tool, either.

My test loop took me into the foothills around a popular pro training area near Pedreguer and Orba in south-eastern Spain. It incorporated a mix of flat and rolling terrain, complete with one significant climb and accompanying sweeping descent.

Throughout, the F7 impressed, mainly because it doesn’t appear to have any real weaknesses in its arsenal.

On flat terrain, it feels as if it holds its speed very well, despite being fitted with decidedly mid-tier carbon wheels.

The Most Ultrafast 40 wheelset you get as part of the build on all F9s, F7s and one of the F5 builds is actually a pair of Vision SC 40 DBs in disguise.

They’re decent performers, with the deeper SC 55s scoring 3 stars in a recent review, but don’t feel as if they’re maximising the F7’s potential when it comes to aerodynamic efficiency or lightweight reactivity.

The core of the bike feels well-refined, with lots of stiffness coming from the Italian threaded bottom bracket zone.

With the front end offering a strong, rigid platform on which to throw the bike around, I found myself keen to power over the steep rises that characterised parts of the test loop.

On the longer climb of the route, I was happy to sit down and tap out a rhythm while resting my hands on the flattened tops of the Most Talon Ultra cockpit.

Overall, the bike feels taught and responsive. Once I got over the ‘new bike’ feel that almost always accompanies first rides, the F7 responded quickly and accurately to my inputs.

The 700 x 28c Pirelli P7 tyres certainly leave something to be desired in terms of grip and suppleness compared to the best road bike tyres (I’m looking forward to trying the F7 with higher-spec rubber even more than I am upgrading the middling wheels). However, I could nevertheless tip the F7 into a corner at speed and have confidence the line I picked would be stuck to.

The roads in this part of Spain are famously smooth, not offering up much indication of how the bike might perform when road surfaces are less than perfect.

A full test in the UK will put the F7 to the sword in that respect, but on the couple of occasions I caught myself on broken divots in the road, I didn’t get the sense of the F7 ‘crashing’ through the crevices.

I’m mildly optimistic that, although bred for racing and keen sportive / gran fondo hunting, the new bike could offer enough compliance so as not to rattle your fillings out on rough roads.

30mm-wide tyre clearance is not extraordinary on paper (the Scott Foil RC features similar clearance, while Canyon’s newest Ultimate can fit 32mm tyres, and the Cervelo S5 can even accommodate up to 34mm rubber), but should meet the needs of most of its target riders.

But, perhaps surprisingly, when I followed up my original Pinarello-approved test loop with a steadier social sojourn to the coast, the F7 showed me a softer side.

Where one might expect a Pinarello race bike to be no-compromise – requiring committed inputs and high-speed riding to get the most out of it – I found it relatively relaxing to ride when the pressure was off.

Accepting the smooth road conditions, I found it very easy to ride gently.

Some ultra-stiff and aggressive race bikes can lose the handling refinement you find at higher speeds when they’re ridden more steadily. Here, the F7’s behaviour remained sharp, composed – but perhaps most importantly – consistent and easy to predict.

It remains to be seen whether the F-Series is a race bike that’s equally at home on steady Sunday coffee rides as it is in a competitive scenario, but my initial experience certainly raises that tantalising possibility.

Pinarello F7 bottom line

Pinarello’s latest F-Series bikes certainly look like an offshoot of the Dogma F, and my initial feeling about the F7 is of a consummate all-round racer. It's perhaps not outstanding in any one measure, but potentially excellent when it comes to covering the major performance bases.

That shouldn’t come as much of a surprise – the lineage to the Dogma F (and previous versions of the Dogma) is clear. If Pinarello hadn’t been delivering the goods to Team Ineos-Grenadiers over the years, it’s hard to believe the one-time leading WorldTour team wouldn’t have switched suppliers before now.

However, the F7 has far tougher testing ground to cover before I deliver a lasting verdict. Sunny weather and smooth roads can flatter any bike, after all.

We’ll bring a full review soon.