With up to 12 races on a PCT team's schedule this month, we'll split the update into two - and like last year, we'll split the updated into the Cobbbles and the Other Races category. Let's go!
Partial Monthly Ranking: Cobbles
Two classics for each of the HC, C1 and C2 categories. Six in total - a crucial month for the cobblers!
And a cobbler was a crucial signing for several teams - and three of them actually got a Top 4 right in the first race, which was the HC Omloop Het Nieuwsblad!
Most importantly, 2M signing Kasperkiewicz, who won the race and 140 points for Specialized. With several of the team's other strong cobblers being in Portugal, there weren't any depth points, but 140 is still the highest score of the race.
2nd place went to UBS' new cobbles leader Jacobs, and just like Specialized, the Swiss failed to get any depth points. So that's 98 points for them.
Debesay sprinted to 3rd, but JEWA only comes in 5th place with his scoring. Instead, ELCO had four riders finishing between 7th and 16th, with Boutopoulos, Kortsidakis, Summerhill and Stavrakakis. Their points add up to 89, which is the 3rd highest amount in this race.
As mentioned before, the legendary Viana do Castelo classic - a hilly circuit including a long cobbled downhill section - was held on the same day. An incredibly low amount of 8 teams participated in the race and - spoiler - all of them scored.
The biggest chunk of points went to India, thanks to Benoot winning the race for Sony - and both Cataford (6th) and M. Van Dijke (8th) finishing in the Top 10 as well. That's 136 points for them, almost an HC win's worth in terms of points.
Only 7 points behind are the actual HC winners of the day, Specialized. Meurisse, the well-known Viana specialist, delivered once again and finished 2nd. With Riesebeek (4th), Battistella (9th) and De Vos (12th), they made perfect use of the minimal startlist to get a huge depth result and 129 points!
3rd place goes to the 3rd - and final - PCT team on the startlist, JEWA. With Lienhard in 19th and Gabburo in 23rd, they only scored 6 points - but with no other team present, that's enough for a podium spot. Overall, though, they're 8th among the 8 teams present.
The next race also didn't have many PCT teams participating - 4 to be precise - but for a C2 race, this is pretty usual. Usual, yet not necessarily understandable, as C2 cobbles often are pretty decent scoring opportunities for PCT squads.
And Gent - Wevelgem definitely was a pretty big scoring race, at least for 3/4 teams. The top scorers were Bralirwa, with Teggart once again proving his worth in C2 and getting a fantastic 2nd place finish. Habimana added a strong 9th place to that, making it 47 points for the Rwandans.
Tafjord weren't far off, though. Their best result may "only" be a 7th place by Nielsen, but with Kaislavuo (8th), Kulppi (11th) and Kaczmarek (15th) they got three more scorers, for 44 points in total! The Minions scored 23 points thanks to De Witte's 5th place, while JEWA left empty-handed.
Then came the other cobbled HC classic on the calendar, Le Samyn. And just like Omloop, it was clear pre-race that there would be a different winner than in 2023, with Theuns - who won them both last year - gone to PT.
One rider who often struggled against said Theuns last year, and now enjoys the latter plus the likes of Spengler or Van Hooydonck gone to PT as well, is Maxime Daniel! Ekoi's Frenchman won the race and 140 points - which however makes Ekoi only the 2nd highest scoring team.
Kortsidakis may not be the most shiny rider (yet), but ELCO clearly made their numbers count here, with one of them having enough energy left to even challenge for the win! It wasn't to be, but 2nd by Kortsidakis, 8th by Stavrakakis and 10th by Summerhill is an absolutely awesome depth result! Add 21st place by Boutopoulos on top of that, and that's 172 points for the Greek!
The most surprising name on the podium however is clearly Saya Kuroeda's; the Japanese was dropped at some point, but then came back and blasted past almost everyone for 3rd place! With his brother Shiki and Yechezkel, Sony got two more riders in the points, for 92 in total.
The story of the C2 GP Herning is a short one: One PCT team, no points. Tafjord's best rider, Berger, ended up 52nd, more than 7 minutes away from the points. We'll therefore not even include the race in the overview.
The final one was Kuurne - Bruxelles - Kuurne, the 2nd C1 event. A "true" cobbles race this time. And a race that has "Joeri Stallaert" written all over, with the Belgian being 4-times winner already. And he felt very strong again, launching a long-range attack. Which he continued even when it came clear it wouldn't work - so he had not much left in the end and finished only 8th.
Other riders showed what the perfect strategy would have looked like. Most of all Johan Jacobs, with the UBS rider winning his first race, after having finished 2nd earlier this month in Omloop. He just timed his sprint to perfection - which was needed, with much faster sprinters in the group. The Swiss got the win and 80 points, to which Schäppi added a 17th place to bring UBS' total to 86.
The winner is 27, the runner-up 35 - indeed, the legendary Summerhill still has some great efforts in him! With all his experience, he found the right moment to surprise everyone bar Jacobs by launching the sprint, and in the end was able to hold onto 2nd place! Boutopoulos also finished in the front group (13th), and although it wasn't the same huge depth result as in Le Samyn, it's still a solid amount of 66 points for ELCO.
Sprinting to 3rd, Max Daniel once again proved he feels really well in the thinned out PCT cobblers field! Louvel (16th), Mestric (18th) and Pithie (20th) make it a strong depth result and 61 points for Ekoi.
After all these races, we can spot pretty expected names topping the "Cobbles" partial ranking: Specialized and ELCO had a close fight for the top spot, with the Canadians having the upper hand against the Greek with 339 vs. 327 points.
Ekoi get a strong 3rd place and - just like Specialized - the confirmation that their top signing is worth his money. 286 points for the Frenchies, with Sony following almost 40 points back (greatly benefitting from the "special" cobbles in Viana).
Bralirwa, UBS and JEWA are separated by 9 points, just below 200 in total. Otherwise, only ISA, Lierse and Tryg got over 100 points - and 8 teams scored no points at all in these races. And yes, all of them did race in Omloop and Le Samyn, so clearly cobbles are no priority for them.
Here's the overview:
Pos
Team
OHN
Via
G-W
Her
Sam
KBK
Total
1
Specialized
140
129
0
0
32
38
339
2
ELCO - ABEA
89
0
0
0
172
66
327
3
Ekoi - Le Creuset
85
0
0
0
140
61
286
4
Sony - Force India
20
136
0
0
92
0
248
5
Bralirwa - Cegeka
67
0
47
0
53
32
199
6
Team UBS
98
0
0
0
12
86
196
7
JEWA TIROL
82
6
0
0
61
41
190
8
ISA - Hexacta
56
0
0
0
37
43
136
9
Lierse SK - Pizza Ullo PCTeam
18
0
0
0
70
20
108
10
Tryg - Eni
53
0
0
0
22
28
103
11
Tafjord Kraft
0
0
44
0
20
0
64
12
Lotto-Caloi
45
0
0
0
10
0
55
13
Llapi-Vita
16
0
0
0
36
0
52
14
Team Popo4Ever p/b Morshynska
7
0
0
0
45
0
52
15
Minions
5
0
23
0
5
0
33
16
DK Zalgiris
31
0
0
0
0
0
31
17
Manada Coyote
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
18
Sauber Petronas Racing
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
19
Indosat Ooredoo
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
20
Kraftwerk Man Machine
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
21
Benetton Bimex Cycling
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
22
Everesting
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
23
McCormick Pro Cycling
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
24
Podium Ambition
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
Partial Monthly Ranking: "The Rest"
Most of the cobbles are at the start of the month, and most of the rest in the 2nd half - if we swapped the TTT and KBK, we'd have a perfect split. But no, the TTers have their moment in the spotlight amidst plenty of cobbles.
The C1 TTT was held on the Isle of Man for the 2nd time in history only. And ELCO clearly proved that their strategy of adding quite some TT depth wasn't a bad choice, as they won the race and 100 points! 2nd place went to CT, and so 3rd placed Lierse were the 2nd best PCT team, scoring 50 points. ISA follow 5 seconds and as many points behind - which makes it 45 points for the Latinos.
At the start of the month, we did have the PTHC race Volta a Portugal, but with its 8 days - the longest PTHC event on the calendar - it ended after the TTT. And it ended pretty well for some PCT teams.
Most of all, for Tryg. Which is mostly thanks to Rodenberg, who won stage 2 and took the yellow jersey after the stage. With a 9th and two 5th places on top of that, he ended up 3rd in points and scored 104 points for the team. Then there also was THJ, ending up 13th in GC and 2nd in U25, worth 53 points. Schlegel added a 21st place GC finish on top of that, and with Norsgaard getting some stage points as well, that's 184 points for the Danes. Pretty big scoring I'd say.
Which holds for the 2nd best PCT team as well, getting 179 points. Most of which were won on the final day, with Yates finishing 2nd on the stage and 6th in GC. Yeah, we're obviously talking about McCormick then. Their GC leader got 138 points, with Cabrera, Warbasse and Kuss all getting a Top 50 GC result as well. Hoehn and Revard got a Top 100, and Daniel scored some stage points (mostly from the S6 breakaway) - 179 in total for the team, just 5 short of Tryg.
The fight for 3rd best team was very close, with Sauber finally taking it 156 vs. 155 against Everesting. The Sammarinese had their freshly trained climber Misbah surprisingly finishing among all top climbers, but bettering most of them in the TT - a great 4th place GC finish for him, while also taking 4th on the final stage. 128 points scored by the Malaysian, with Frankiny adding a 31st place in the GC, plus all of Natarov, Campero, Hibatullah and Chen in the Top 100. They also got a 3rd place in teams, for the already mentioned total of 156 points.
From the highest to the lowest race category for PCT teams - the C2 Volta a Catalunya. 6 days in Spain, and 5 teams thought it'd be a good idea to join the CT teams. That's the highest PCT participation in a C2 stage race by the way, only 4 classics have 6 teams.
The good news: all 5 of them scored at least one point. The bad news: None scored even just 10 points. Specialized came out on top, with Dzamastagic getting 4th and 5th places, Potocki finishing 21st in GC and Svestad-Bardseng getting 7th in U25. 9 points for the Canadians.
Then we're already down to 5 points, all of them scored by Revard for McCormick. He finished 6th on the final stage and 4th in the KoM standings.
3rd place goes to two teams, scoring 2 points each: Everesting, with Fortunato finishing 6th in the KoM standings. And Manado, who had Granados in White after stage 2, with the same rider ending up 8th in the U25 standings.
Back up to PTHC, to a mix of hills and TTs - the Tour of Ukraine was the perfect playground for one certain PCT rider.
This rider obviously is Dunbar, and he delivered. Wirtgen and Würtz were out of reach, but he easily cruised to 3rd in both TTs, the GC, and also the points standings. That's the first 167 points for him this year, but Indosat even had a little more on offer: Canty (20th) and Abdurrahman (29th) also added some good GC points, with Yudha just making the Top 50 as well. 213 points for the Indonesians, best PCT team by a mile.
2nd best were ELCO, although they could have done even a lot better with a decent stage 2. Still, 16th place is respectable for Ioannidis, and with Mavrikakis (23rd), Spanopoulos (28th) and Agrotis (36th) also getting pretty good points, the Greek end up with 77 points.
The fight for 3rd best team was fierce, and in the end one point made the difference in the fight Lierse vs. Minions. Oomen's 2 points for 7th place in stage 2 were decisive, with Oomen narrowly losing out to Cattaneo in the GC. The Lierse leader finished 14th, totalling 41 points. The Belgians also had Covi in 4th place in the KoM, and Van Gils and Potocki picking up minor U25 points - in the end, it's 56 vs. 55 in the duel with Minions.
The sprinters' revenge came next, with the HC Circulo de Juarez giving the chance to strike back to those who failed in Guadeloupe last month - or to confirm their great form to those who already succeeded there.
Coquard completely messed up his sprint in the final stage of Guadeloupe - not so this time, as he won on the last day! He also won stage 3 and finished 3rd on day 4, after having mistimed his sprint on the first two days. But three podiums in the last three days were enough to win the GC and the points jersey, resulting in 257 points. But that wasn't all for Manada: whether it was team tactics or pure luck, all we know is Jimenez Retana finished 2nd - right ahead of Coquard - in stage 4, bringing him to 14th in GC - and to the top of the U25 standings! 64 points for him, and with some GC points by Huertas plus 4th place in the team standings, that's 329 points for the Coyotes!
Usually, the label "Overperformer of the race" goes to Kamberaj or Afewerki. Not so this time, as the biggest overperformer by a mile in this race (or even of the season so far) clearly was Rodenberg! Surprisingly, he was the most consistent sprinter, being the only one to finish all stages in the Top 10 - a win on day 2 was the obvious highlight, but 2nd place on stage 5 plus 2nd in GC and points are the reward for his great consistency! It's 196 points for him - and for Tryg, with none of his teammates scoring.
Which also holds for the teammates of Bonifazio - a usual underperformer, but he actually got it right - and even did a great job - on the first 3 days this time. 2nd, 3rd, 2nd were his first results, leading to him taking over yellow - and that burden was just too high for him. He only barely made the Top 20 on stage 4, and his 9th place on the final day wasn't enough to fend off Coquard and Rodenberg. Still, it's a 3rd place in GC and in points for the Italians - and with 191 points himself and his Lierse team are very close to Rodenberg and Tryg.
By the way, for those interested, the order in the team standings: 1st Specialized, 2nd ELCO, 3rd Lotto, 4th Manada.
Last but not least, another C2 event - a hilly one this time. 4 CT teams made the trip to San Marino for the Coppa Placci - but neither of the two home teams were able to score. Nor were Indosat.
But Ekoi did score - and they even scored pretty big! They're just "in the zone" right now, and in that state it's even possible that Paulus finishes 6th in a classy field. Le Gac also scored with 25th place - 20 points for the Frenchmen, rounding off a pretty nice month for them!
6 races, one winner. Well, actually not. We have a tie for the best "The Rest" team, with two teams getting 380 points out of these six competitions.
Lierse did well in Juarez and the IoM TTT, and had OK-ish results in the two PTHC races, Portugal and Ukraine. Tryg did well in both of their races, Portugal and Juarez, getting almost identical scores from both. And both mostly thanks to Rodenberg.
It's then a 50 points gap down to Manada in 3rd, who scored 331 points - thereof 329 in Juarez. Sauber are the 4th team above 300 points - and they did even "better" than Tryg, getting exactly the same score from Portugal and Juarez. Just a bit less, for 312 in total (i.e. 2x 156).
ELCO and Indosat then are tied for 5th, scoring 254 points each; the former winning the TTT and getting some yet less than expected points from Ukraine and Mexico. Indosat had one big Dunbar race in Ukraine, whereas Catalunya and Juarez were rather letdowns.
Sony and Specialized are above 200 points as well, with the big "midfield" ranging from McCormick in 9th with 184 points to JEWA in 17th with 99 points. Less than 100 points separating 9 teams, whereas from 1st to 9th it's almost 200 points.
The remaining 7 teams definitely didn't have a good month - most of all Popo4Ever, whose riders seem to be more focused on leaving a great impression in their PT wildcard races instead of getting actual points for their team.
You want the full details? Here we go:
Pos
Team
Por
IoM
Cat
Ukr
Jua
Pla
Total
1
Lierse SK - Pizza Ullo PCTeam
83
50
0
56
191
0
380
1
Tryg - Eni
184
0
0
0
196
0
380
3
Manada Coyote
0
0
2
0
329
0
331
4
Sauber Petronas Racing
156
0
0
0
156
0
312
5
ELCO - ABEA
0
100
0
77
77
0
254
5
Indosat Ooredoo
0
0
1
213
40
0
254
7
Sony - Force India
45
25
0
0
163
0
233
8
Specialized
79
0
9
0
119
0
207
9
McCormick Pro Cycling
179
0
5
0
0
0
184
10
ISA - Hexacta
0
45
0
0
130
0
175
11
Kraftwerk Man Machine
36
0
0
0
131
0
167
12
Minions
0
40
0
55
69
0
164
13
Everesting
155
0
2
2
0
0
159
14
Team UBS
101
0
0
0
42
0
143
15
Lotto-Caloi
0
0
0
19
115
0
134
16
Benetton Bimex Cycling
0
0
0
0
102
0
102
17
JEWA TIROL
0
0
0
9
90
0
99
18
Ekoi - Le Creuset
38
0
0
0
0
20
58
19
DK Zalgiris
0
5
0
0
53
0
58
20
Llapi-Vita
0
0
0
17
26
0
43
21
Podium Ambition
0
20
0
4
0
0
24
22
Bralirwa - Cegeka
22
0
0
0
0
0
22
23
Tafjord Kraft
0
20
0
0
0
0
20
24
Team Popo4Ever p/b Morshynska
0
0
0
0
14
0
14
Period Ranking | February
All things considered, we have two teams topping the list pretty clearly, both scoring above 500 points: ELCO and Specialized. The latter however take revenge for their defeat in the "Cobbles" update, winning the month with 581 vs. 546 points. And even better news for them: having spent only 16 RDs, they even dominated February in terms of PpRD, scoring more than 36 points per race day! Specialized on the other hand "only" have the 8th best PpRD.
Lierse, Tryg and Sony end up within just 7 points of each other, ranging from 488 for the former to 481 for the latter. Tryg however used fewer RDs than the others and are the month's #2 in terms of PpRD, with an average above 25.
We then take a big step down in terms of points, to Ekoi, UBS and Manada, scoring between 344 and 331 points. The Swiss weren't overly efficient with a PpRD below 20, whereas the others both are above.
Sauber and ISA also scored above 300 points - and the latter have the 3rd best PpRD of the month with almost 24.
JEWA, Indosat and Bralirwa are the teams between 200 and 300 points, with the Austrians among the "top midfield" teams PpRD-wise.
At the lower end, 5 teams scored less than 100 points - thereof the three teams with only 9 RDs spent. Podium Ambition were expected to be in this region (sorry, TMM), but in particular for P4E and Zalgiris this is rather worrying. Tafjord and Llapi as further promoted teams were also expected to have a rough time.
Just above the Top 5, we have Benetton, Everesting and Kraftwerk - all of these 8 teams scored less than 10 points per race day, which they surely want to start fixing soon.
Here are the full February rankings:
Pos
Team
Cobbles
Rest
Total
RD
PpRD
1
ELCO - ABEA
327
254
581
16
36.31
2
Specialized
339
207
546
27
20.22
3
Lierse SK - Pizza Ullo PCTeam
108
380
488
24
20.33
4
Tryg - Eni
103
380
483
19
25.42
5
Sony - Force India
248
233
481
21
22.90
6
Ekoi - Le Creuset
286
58
344
16
21.50
7
Team UBS
196
143
339
19
17.84
8
Manada Coyote
0
331
331
15
22.07
9
Sauber Petronas Racing
0
312
312
19
16.42
10
ISA - Hexacta
136
175
311
13
23.92
11
JEWA TIROL
190
99
289
18
16.06
12
Indosat Ooredoo
0
254
254
20
12.70
13
Bralirwa - Cegeka
199
22
221
19
11.63
14
Minions
33
164
197
16
12.31
15
Lotto-Caloi
55
134
189
12
15.75
16
McCormick Pro Cycling
0
184
184
18
10.22
17
Kraftwerk Man Machine
0
167
167
17
9.82
18
Everesting
0
159
159
21
7.57
19
Benetton Bimex Cycling
0
102
102
11
9.27
20
Llapi-Vita
52
43
95
12
7.92
21
DK Zalgiris
31
58
89
9
9.89
22
Tafjord Kraft
64
20
84
12
7.00
23
Team Popo4Ever p/b Morshynska
52
14
66
9
7.33
24
Podium Ambition
0
24
24
9
2.67
Full Ranking
Expectedly, the picture in the full rankings is similar to the February update. However, with Specialized having a certain advantage over ELCO in January, the Canadians are topping the current standings! It's a narrow lead, though, with 715 vs. 705 points.
And as if that wasn't close enough already, Lierse also join the party, with the Italians being just another 10 points down, totalling 695!
Tryg in 4th place have 50 point gaps ahead and behind of them with their 643 points. Sony, who round off the Top 5 with 594 points are very closely followed by Ekoi (-6) and Manada (-12), and even ISA (-31) and UBS (-38) aren't far away. So yeah, we've got less of a gap between 5th and 9th than between 4th and 5th.
By the way, when looking at PpRD the best team so far - and by far - are ELCO, having an average score of 32 points per race day. Ekoi come closest with 22.6, so yeah, that's quite a margin...
Lotto then are the final Top 10 team, but 120 points behind UBS. And closely followed by former leaders Llapi, Bralirwa and Sauber, the last teams above 400 points.
At the bottom, it's really not looking good so far for Tafjord, P4E and Podium Ambition points-wise, with an almost 100 points gap to 19th already. PpRD-wise, McCormick and Everesting also look bad, just like Kraftwerk in 18th.
But there's still plenty of time to turn things around, and with very interesting stage races like Colombia, Norway, South Africa, Eritrea or Franceville, expect some major shakeups by the end of March!
Before we get there, though, let's take a look at the current standings:
Guadeloupe in January and Juarez in February were the two big early stage races for the sprinters - and sprinters take 7 Top 10 spots currently. With the others going to cobblers, which shouldn't be surprising either.
Topping the list after 2nd in Guadeloupe and the Mexico win is Bryan Coquard, living up to his billing as the division's top sprinter. 454 points were already scored, many more should come in later.
Niccolo Bonifazio is certainly a surprising name in 2nd place - but only when you look at his history and not at his skills. The Italian finally seems to do certain things right and already scored 356 points, about 3/4 of his 2023 scoring.
Caleb Ewan won in Guadeloupe, but failed in most of the Juarez stages, which must be particularly disappointing for his Latin team. 338 points for him. Followed by one of the biggest surprises so far, Frederik Rodenberg, who already got 308 points - over 100 more than the whole last year, despite no apparent improvement.
Maxime Daniel then has been the strongest cobbler so far, with 256 points, followed by two more sprinters in Daniel Vesely and Lionel Coutinho - one slightly above, the other a tad below 200 points.
Including Coutinho, it's 5 riders within 9 points, with Johan Jacobs, Przemyslaw Kasperkiewicz, Xhuliano Kamberaj and Mekseb Debesay taking 8th to 11th.
Askey with his GORC brekaway win, Dunbar with a strong Ukraine performance and Yates doing well in Portugal are the only non-sprinters-non-cobblers currently in the Top 20 - expect that to change soon!
First of all, again massive thanks for these monster updates Fabi! The cobbles breakdown really shows just how woeful Samyn was for us, and while it is difficult to be too mad when you're leading the pack, but those points missing from Samyn might come back to bite us.
Coutinho's season opener feels amazing considering he's already matched what he put out last season with plenty of RDs left!
Dropped three positions. Don't want to get any lower than this. Not another season looking more down than up. Seems like some nice races coming up next month and the cobbles are almost behind, so enough hope to reverse course.
Before anything else, love the way you split the update in cobbles and non-clobbles, this makes things so much more interesting!
It unfortunately also shows how bad we're doing on the cobbles, 9th isn't near good enough.
I can't complain about the rest though. Even Bonifazio is become a solid scorer, despite his collapse. Van Poucke also started off his season in the right way. Oomen with a race that doesn't really suit him also off to a good start. Our top 10 goal looks manageble if Gamper steps up and Oomen gets more race days.
Let me be the first to congratulate ELCO on the division title, they're just incredibly solid allround.
We had low expextatioms from the first two months with just 2 RDs from Benoot and Olivier combined! However, the rest of the team have really stepped up and put us in a great position for the moment. Fantastic to see Saya's redemption arc already this season and the gamble on Kulikovskiy has been a decent success so far. Also great to see MVD stepping up and claiming his opportunities while Trezise already getting 27 points is great. Hopefully we can keep this going when the top leaders start coming out to play in March.
