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The new Factor Ostro Gravel isn’t the brand’s first foray away from tarmac. It already has what it calls THE gravel race bike (a title which, one assumes, will be transferred to the Ostro) in the LS model, and the Vista, which is more of an endurance road bike with some gravelly capabilities.
Taking the name of the brand’s do it all, aero road bike and tacking ‘gravel’ onto it does give you some indication of the stated aims of the new Ostro Gravel; speed, winning gravel races, and finally some more speed. Gravel racing appears to be here to stay, and this is a gravel race bike with its sights set firmly on the top step of the podium.
UCI legality
The little UCI sticker, tucked away at the top of the seattube on every UCI legal bike, is something that’s easy to miss, and until recently it was something not overly necessary for bike companies to consider when making a gravel bike. Now though, with UCI sanctioned gravel races it is a prerequisite for entry, and given the Factor LS isn’t UCI legal if the brand wants to compete then it had to either re-engineer the LS or create a new bike, and evidently they chose the latter option, leaving the LS as more of a do it all model by comparison.
Performance details
While low weight has taken a back seat in recent years to aero optimisation, having a sub-kilogram weight for the frameset is certainly up there with the best gravel race bikes. It also indicates there is little additional spare carbon kicking about for load carrying; no fork bosses, but there are double sets for a bolt-on top tube bento box and on the downtube for what Factor described as an ‘E.coli catcher’, or a third bottle for you and I.
While 900g is feathery for a gravel frameset (in the ‘Naked Grunge’ paint option – essentially raw with some splashes), there is still material enough to sculpt the tubing into the prerequisite aero optimised shapes, and the DNA of the OSTRO VAM is pretty clear to see, creating what Factor claims as ‘class leading aerodynamics’. The headtube is particularly deep, more akin to the best aero road bikes than those attuned to the rough stuff, with the usual truncated aerofoils on the downtube and seattube too. It stopped short of a hinge-based headtube, opting instead for a round steerer and more standard headset for strength, with the spacer stack being aero optimised to offset any downsides from round leading…
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