Venus Bicycle | Online Bike shop |

The Basso Pista Frameset takes Basso’s track knowhow and marries it to the insights gained taking their Konos time trial bike to the wind tunnel. The result is a lightning-fast quick-handling stallion for the banked oval.

Track racing is short and fast. Every little advantage you can take helps when the difference between winning and losing is less than a second. Basso designed lots of little advantages into the Pista for that reason. Most of the frame tubes are shaped primarily with the goal of slicing through the wind. The fork legs are straight and bladed and the crown fits into a notch in the downtube. The head tube is shaped for aerodynamics. The stem is not only shaped for aerodynamics, and included, but so, too are the included spacers. the stem fits 31.8mm bars, btw.

The downtube is dropped so low that they needed to cut out the upper part of the downtube to fit the front wheel. The seat tube shrouds the rear w heel. The seatstays are shaped for aerodynamics as well—they even line up with the fork legs. And the included seat post, 350mm long with 15mm of setback, is shaped like an airfoil.

Track bikes need to be stiff, as the riders can be big and they need to know that the bike won’t wiggle around underneath them when diving between two riders in a turn. So Basso deployed Torayca T7000 High Modulus Carbon Fiber in both the frame and fork. They then maximized these plies by building a tapered 1 1/8” to 1 ½” steerer tube, extending the headtube rearward into the top and downtubes to make sure that the front end doesn’t have any lateral give, and made the downtube as wide as possible given the constraints of the English-threaded bottom bracket, a concession to tradition, as track bikes haven’t had the war of standards that road and mountain bikes have experienced.

The geometry is fast as well. They use super-short 373mm chainstays. The reach, compared to the stack, is long. The bottom bracket, is traditional track at 285mm, which is high for the road. This results in great power-transfer to the rear wheel, and great maneuverability.

Basso sees their Pista as a system. As such, they include the headset, stem, and seatpost. The stem is included for it’s strength, for it’s minimal, aero profile, and because they’re able to include three aero spacers that further the aerodynamics of the bike. The stem works with 31.8mm bars. The max tire width is 23mm.

Their final touch is the rear fork tips. They’re stainless steel, have micro adjusters to make setting the position easy, and, most importantly, are replaceable. Sometimes track riders go ape on their axle nuts for fear of the wheel slipping under heavy accelerations. While over-tightening is not necessary, that the tips are replaceable, should give peace of mind.

A track bike should be so stiff that it can’t be flexed out of line, so aero that it barely disturbs the wind, and with a geometry that not only maximizes power transfer, but allows you to turn on a dime. The Basso Pista hits all the marks with inimitable style.