Pinarello factory visit: how the iconic frames are painted

The best day for any cyclist is new bike day. It doesn't matter if it's your first or your twenty first bike, once that order has been placed it's an excitable countdown to the day of delivery.

For our Ollie this is no ordinary new bike day – he’s heading to the factory to pick his up. That factory just happens to be the Pinarello headquarters in Treviso, Italy and the man handing over the bike just happens to be the top man, Fausto Pinarello himself.

Before he gets his hands on the new bike that he’ll be riding in future videos here on GCN, Ollie also got a chance to have a sneak peak behind the scenes at the Pinarello factory and take in a tour of its incredible bike museum. He's a lucky lad.

Pinarello is a brand steeped in history. It was founded in 1952 by Giovanni Pinarello who, after a short spell as a pro rider opened his own bike shop in Treviso fixing and building bikes. The brand steadily grew over the years and enjoyed the first of many Grand Tour successes in 1975 when Fausto Bertoglio won the Giro d’Italia. From there it achieved multiple wins across the Tour de France and Giro d'Italia, with most of the winners' jerseys displayed on the walls of the impressive museum.

The rooms and even the corridors are adorned with iconic Pinarello bikes and memorabilia, from Miguel Induráin's Pinarello Sword TT bikes to Connor Swift’s Pinarello X from the 2023 Gravel World Championships in Italy, still covered in the dust and dirt from the race. Every way you turn there's a bike or piece of kit, each telling a story from a specific moment in time.

A tour round the Pinarello factory

Once we prized Ollie away from the museum, and believe us it took a while, he headed to the factory to find out more about the process behind the finishes to Pinarello’s frames.

From seeing the bikes in their ‘raw’ state he follows how they’re prepped for painting, how the fades and transitions are applied and how the bikes are then given a clear lacquer coating to help protect them. An interesting process Ollie finds is how the decals are applied in a way that prevents too much lacquer being added to the bike. This all counts as extra weight on the frame and here, where weight really matters, keeping the tiniest amounts like this to a minimum is absolutely crucial.

• Read more: Pinarello unveils new Ineos Grenadiers Dogma colourway, leading to marginal gains

The incredible array of paint jobs, finishes and styles is breathtaking and has been enough to distract Ollie from the other reason he's here - to pick up his new bike from head honcho Fausto Pinarello.

© GCN

Ollie looks delighted with his new Pinarello F7 Ultegra Di2 - where will it take him first?

The bike he's taking home is a Pinarello F7 Ultegra Di2. It sits below the F9 but shares a lot of the same features at a more affordable price point. It has a subtle matte black frame with silver flecks and a gloss black logo on the bike. As for the set up, there will be a few tweaks to come from Ollie with the introduction of his SLR boost saddle but the cockpit is pretty much as he wants it. So he's pretty much ready for those adventures we'll see him on soon in GCN videos. We're sure we’ll be seeing it in the GCN Bike Vault sometime soon too.

Keep an eye out for it in future videos and let us know what you think of the bike but also what your favourite paint jobs were from his factory visit.

For more bike tech stories check out our dedicated tech section on the GCN website.