Pinarello Mercurio Sora Complete Road Bike 2016

Though many of Italy's most venerable manufacturers have been slow to embrace road disc brakes, Pinarello proved itself an early adapter with the Mercurio Sora Complete Road Bike. To us, Italy and gravel bikes make sense see for example l'Eroica, a race across Tuscany's white gravel roads that started as a gran fondo in '97 and quickly grew into a favorite with the top hard men of the peloton, too. We suspect the reason for its immediate success is two fold. First, its varied terrain of tarmac and limestone makes for a race that's full of opportunities for ambitious racers to blow the field apart which also makes it a fan favorite. Second, everyone from the pro ranks on down to us aspirational cyclists can agree that this kind of mixed surface adventure cycling is just a hell of a lot of fun. Gravel bikes are about freedom to explore everything up to and including singletrack and fire roads, and bikes like the Mercurio embody that ethos of exploration. The Mercurio's frame is constructed from a targeted lay up of 24HMUD carbon, which is spec'd to withstand 24 tons of pressure per square centimeter. It's not quite as light and stiff as the carbon used in the Dogma line, but it's not supposed to be. Rather, the 24HMUD used here is meant to strike a balance between rigidity, low weight, chatter devouring smoothness, and price. It excels on all fronts, as it's stiff and light enough to meet the needs of everything short of crit sprinters and featherweight climbers but still keeps the price to a point where a dedicated self sponsored racer could even pick one up as an all terrain adventure bike. That's not to say it's a slow plodding, unwieldy urban noodler, though. In addition to benefiting from Pinarello's high modulus carbon expertise, the Mercurio has the same Onda fork shape that was developed in conjunction with Jaguar for the Dogma F8. The only differences are that it's made from a different material the same 24HMUD used in the frame and built up on the ...