When the Pinarello Dogma F8 was unveiled in 2014, we were invited to a secret media camp in Asolo, Italy. We stayed at the Albergo al Sole boutique hotel, where Fausto Pinarello presented the new bike. Then we rode it with him and Bernhard Eisel, who was with Team Sky at the time, through rustic, terracotta-coloured villages surrounded by cypress trees out into the foothills of the Dolomites.
Seven years, two Dogmas and one pandemic later, the launch of the Dogma F was conducted over Zoom, where we watched a video from our homes and then had a slightly awkward Q&A with the R&D team afterwards.
However, Pinarello did ship a bike to my home address in Surrey: although Box Hill is hardly Monte Grappa I would still get to do a first ride before the embargo date, and in some ways it might be a fairer test without Fausto gesticulating from his own custom fluoro Dogma and eagerly awaiting our feedback.
Unboxed and assembled in my sitting room, the new Dogma F did indeed look incongruously iconic. Perhaps the ordinary English surroundings exaggerated its exotic Italianness, but ever since the F8 - which was almost disappointingly plain-looking compared to the curvaceous Dogma 65.1 Think2 it replaced - the Dogma has been getting its shapeliness back, and for me this is the best-looking Dogma F series yet.
In the meantime of course there have been the F10 and the F12. This time Pinarello decided to drop the numerical sequencing and stick with just ‘F’. “A Pinarello Dogma is an icon,” said the press release. “It goes beyond a number or superficial classifications. We chose a simple F.”
When Pinarello brought in Dimitris Katsanis and Jaguar to design the aerodynamic F8, for a lot of people the Dogma lost something - in its aesthetics at least. With the new Dogma F it’s as if Pinarello just couldn’t resist gradually putting back the passione. That gets my approval.
Credit Source : cyclingweekly.com
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