Great, another complete shit race for us.
I obviously overestimated the climbing impact, so the lineup wasn't optimal, but if random guys like Luchshenko, Budenieks and especially Hermans (who doesn't have the sprint bonus the other two have) can get a Top 10, Masnada should never ever miss that decisive split.
Well, I guess our luck for this month was used up after S4 of Pologne, as we only did complete bullshit since that stage. We're now on par with McCormick in terms of RDs - but we didn't use that RD difference well at all. Guess I just shouldn't read the hilly races reports anymore, those races just suck.
Thanks to cunego for taking on the race nonetheless, obviously wasn't fun to read in the end, but yeah, at least the best puncheurs were on top. Congrats to the Amayzing dominators of the division once again.
Fabianski wrote:
I obviously overestimated the climbing impact, so the lineup wasn't optimal, but if random guys like Luchshenko, Budenieks and especially Hermans (who doesn't have the sprint bonus the other two have) can get a Top 10, Masnada should never ever miss that decisive split.
For what it is worth I am also dumbfounded by Hermans highrolling insanely he has good energy stats but no clue how he is performing this well recently. Feels like I have had 78-79 rated hills riders before who does not come remotely close to these performances recently.
I will say, I'm fairly sure Hermans would never have achieved this if he was team leader himself. I think the game simply rated fast finishers highly (see Oliveira being 5th on the ingame pre race favorites list; this also explains Luchshenko's role to some extent) and as such, Meurisse's teammates got the instruction to work at or near the front of the peloton. And he capitalized on that positioning.
Masnada, with 63 sprint, was apparently never considered a strong contender and as such placed fairly poorly in the peloton. Having team leaders outside the Top ~12-15 do that is not unusual, even if it might be frustrating. De Plus (61 sprint) got a similar "treatment", Betancourt finished 45th despite his 79 hill as well, and his 66/72 spr/acc combo is one of the worse among puncheurs rated as highly as he is. Van Niekerk (63/74) didn't perform great either.
This approach isn't perfect and doesn't explain everything, for example Budenieks still shouldn't be rated highly enough to "let" Strava have three guys in the final selection or finish that strongly. And of course, even with good positioning Hermans maybe shouldn't be able to keep guys like Bystrom or Jensen or Bilbao behind him, and why can he keep it up while Aranburu doesn't, despite both working etc (apparently, Gaspar did most of the work for HelloFresh, but you get the point).
And much of the frustration for many probably comes from misjudging the profile, which is understandable. I would have thought MO would make more of an impact as well. Plus, there is a good amount of randomness. That said, there's also always more at play than raw stats, especially just main stats, and I think some logic can be applied here. Then again, I'm using a lot of hindsight here of course.
