Henrique Avancini headlines Factor Racing

Bike racing is in our DNA. It’s our passion and our inspiration. We love watching it, sponsoring it, thinking about it, developing bikes and accessories for it. Now Factor Bikes has taken the step to establish its own factory team – Factor Racing.

As the cornerstone of the project, Factor Bikes has become the title sponsor for a UCI Continental men’s cycling team based in Slovenia. The team has a 68-year history and has proved to be extremely successful at identifying and developing talent, which will remain a primary focus of the Factory Racing team. Factor Bikes has always sponsored teams and athletes, from the WorldTour level through to individual privateers. Taking this additional step of supporting our own in-house factory team will give us a chance to continue developing our products to support riders competing at the highest levels.

Henrique Avancini joins the squad

Brazilian legend, Henrique Avancini, has chosen Factor Racing as the team he wanted to join with the goal of returning to the highest level, competing on the road after over a decade as an elite mountain bike racer. Having retired from mountain bike racing after winning the 2023 UCI Mountain Bike XC Marathon World Championship, Henrique took some time to recharge his batteries and refocus his goals.

“In 2024, I started thinking seriously about racing on the road,” Henrique explained. “As a child, I used to dream about racing the Tour, the Giro, the Vuelta. When I felt refreshed mentally and physically, I really started to be able to enjoy what I’d achieved as a mountain biker, and think seriously about giving this gift to myself, this goal of trying to achieve my childhood dream.”

Now with his new project to test how far he can make it racing on the road, Henrique is doing something entirely for his own pleasure, and he has partnered with the right team to do it. “When I first met with Factor, for some reason, they were really excited about the project,” he confided. “I felt from the very first meetings that this was the right group of people to try this with. And win or lose, it still feels like something great to do.”

Henrique Avancini’s success and popularity especially in Brazil exponentially helped to raise cycling’s profile in his home country. It was a goal to give back to the sport and an honour to help popularize cycling in Brazil. But it also resulted in Henrique feeling extra pressure to perform and not disappoint his supporters. “I felt a lot of pressure not to let cycling down in my country,” he said. “I had helped to build the sport a lot in Brazil, but I felt that responsibility, too.”

With Henrique’s participation, Factor Racing team takes on a whole new dimension, and being able to support him in his chase of his childhood dream is a privilege for the team.

FACTOR RACING umbrella

In addition to Avancini, the UCI Continental Factor Racing team boasts Paul Wright, 2025 New Zealand National Road Race Champion, who will act as road captain, and a group of talented U23 athletes from Slovenia.

But that is not all. Factor Racing will act as an umbrella organization that will include and support all our sponsored privateer athletes, including Lauren De Crescenzo, Rob Britton, Matthew Holmes, Beth Potter, and Ryan Collins.

Lauren De Crescenzo

Rob Britton

Matthew Holmes

Beth Potter

Ryan Collins

The athletes we support play an essential role in the development and refinement of all Factor and Black Inc products. Their real-world use scenarios and subsequent feedback provides a foundation for every engineering and design decision we make. The fact that our privateers race at the top level in every imaginable discipline means that we have elite quality feedback that can be incorporated in each model and product we make, from road racing, to gravel, track, time trial and triathlon.

“We’re extremely proud to be inaugurating our first-ever Factor factory team. We look forward to leveraging the close working relationship we’ll have with Factor Racing riders to continue developing the fastest racing equipment in the sport,” said Rob Gitelis, Factor and Black Inc founder.

See you on the road.