Modern Adventure Chooses The Factor Monza Over The OSTRO VAM For Roubaix Debut: Inside The 2.5-Watt Trade That May Save Their Race
In the final 72 hours before the départ in Compiègne, while the big teams tinker with 35mm tubeless and 1x drivetrains, the only UCI ProTeam in Sunday's 2026 Paris-Roubaix peloton has quietly made the most interesting equipment decision of the week. Modern Adventure Pro Cycling, the American invitee debuting at the Monument, has confirmed they will race on the Factor Monza — and not, as almost everyone expected, on the lighter and more aerodynamic OSTRO VAM that has been the weapon of choice for the team's other Classics programme so far this spring.
The announcement came on Thursday afternoon via a joint statement from Modern Adventure and Factor, timed to the official team bus presentation outside the velodrome in Roubaix. "Factor recommended we ride the Monza for one reason," general manager George Hincapie told reporters. "A broken frame ends your Roubaix. A 2.5-watt aero penalty does not."
The figure is Factor's own. In head-to-head wind-tunnel testing between the brand's three top-tier road frames — the ONE, the OSTRO VAM and the Monza — the Monza is the slowest of the three at a representative Roubaix speed of 46 kph, by roughly 2.5 watts. The company's engineers, working alongside Modern Adventure performance director Clara Hughes, were unanimous: while the stiffness profiles of the three bikes are similar, the frame mass and laminate volume of the Monza is noticeably greater. Translation: it is the toughest bike Factor makes.
For a team whose avowed objective on Sunday is simply to get every rider to the velodrome, that tradeoff is not even close. The Monza will be paired with Enve SES 4.5 wheels and a 34mm tubeless tyre — smaller than the 35mm Continental GP5000 S TR 35 that UAE Team Emirates-XRG have fitted to Tadej Pogačar's Colnago, but the largest the Monza can accommodate around the chainstays without rubbing. The team's wrenches have been gluing rim tape inside the fork crowns as additional mud-strike protection since Tuesday.
It is a philosophy entirely out of step with the rest of the WorldTour peloton, where the arms race this spring has been a single-minded pursuit of wider tyres, softer compounds and lower pressures. Mathieu van der Poel's Alpecin-Deceuninck will race a Canyon Aeroad CFR with a 32mm tyre. Wout van Aert's Visma-Lease a Bike is on the Cervélo S5 with a 34mm. Even Filippo Ganna, who traditionally rides the stiffest bike on the start line, has moved his Ineos Grenadiers Pinarello Dogma F back a frame size at the suggestion of new team bike fitter Dario David Cioni.
In that context, a team choosing the heavier, slower, tougher option reads like a statement of first principles. "We are a UCI ProTeam debuting at Paris-Roubaix," Hincapie said. "Our riders have never finished in the velodrome. For us, the headline result is not a top ten. It is eight of eight at the velodrome. It is getting to Sunday night and having a training camp on Tuesday with everybody still on a bike. That is the number we were optimising for."
The decision is not without its historical echoes. In 2018, Peter Sagan won Paris-Roubaix on what was then Specialized's heavier and less aero S-Works Roubaix frame rather than the stiffer, lighter Tarmac — a choice Sagan's DS at the time described in almost identical language ("I will trade two watts for a finish line"). The Monza is not an endurance frame in the same sense, but the governing principle is the same: at the Hell of the North, only finishers compete.
Modern Adventure's eight-rider lineup, confirmed on Tuesday, is led by French Roubaix specialist Lionel Taminiaux and includes 24-year-old American prospect Luke Lamperti and Argentine neo-pro Facundo Crisafulli. The team is expected to ride defensively through the opening Briastre density cluster before sending Taminiaux up the road on the Trouée d'Arenberg. Whether the Monza keeps him there, or whether its 2.5-watt deficit catches up to him on the final forty flat kilometres to the velodrome, will be the quiet subplot of Sunday's race. Factor will be watching as closely as anyone.