Highlights: His performance in the Tour of South Africa, winning a stage, spending time in yellow and coming in 10th on GC.
Lowlights: Some underperformances in hilly races and very few overperformances.
Points: 210 (93rd in Division/6th in Team)
Rider of the Month: 1 (June)
Victories: 1
Breakaways: 3 (1 successful - 3rd)
Verdict: A solid year from our resident Beasty Bastard, who stepped up to lead us in PCT after tearing apart the CT. It obviously wasn't as easy this year but he managed to battle through quite well and ended up with a credible 210 points which is very nice, and brought us a huge result on home roads in South Africa, one of the season highlights. He enters his last year at his peak with a difficult choice between staying with us, at "home", or going to CT for one last year of glory.

Highlights: His gritty 2nd in the Ronde van het IJssellmeer or his points win, stage win and 8th on GC in Cheshire.
Lowlights: A few below par sprint results and never did anything on the cobbles outside of Cheshire
Points: 518 (40th/2nd)
Rider of the Month: 2 (May and September)
Victories: 1
Breakaways: 0
Verdict: A fantastic year for our Welshman who brought in over 500 points and made two great memories with his fantastic ride in awful conditions in the Ronde van Het IJsselmeer and his hard-earned stage win finally coming in Cheshire over his older brother Matt! He'll be back again next year to do it all again hopefully, and we can't wait to see more of our "not just a" sprinter!

Highlights: A stint in the KoM lead in Portugal (above)
Lowlights: Getting dropped by 8 minutes in a GC truce stage in Avenir.
Points: 9 (429th/15th)
Rider of the Month: 0
Victories: 0
Breakaways: 1 (Wore KoM)
Verdict: Our young Ugandan continues his rise to soon be the best Schleck as he grew tremendously this year by not coming last every stage and even wearing the KoM jersey in Portugal. Next year he'll be a good domestique for our climbers and in two or three years he'll finally surpass distant cousin Andy for the title of best Schleck.

Highlights: Probably set the record for DNFs.
Lowlights: Hard to have lowlights when you do nothing.
Points: 0 (585th/22nd)
Rider of the Month: 0
Victories: 0
Breakaways: 0
Verdict: One day he'll take so many victories and yellow jerseys we'll forget how bad he used to be at cycling. For now though? Poor guy.

Highlights: His breakaway ride to third (above) and some very solid cobbles performances.
Lowlights: None really.
Points: 19 (363rd/11th)
Rider of the Month: 0
Victories: 0
Breakaways: 4 (1 successful 3rd)
Verdict: A very solid season for our young cobbler as he grew enormously as a cyclist and now is almost at full potential. Plenty of breakaway appearances culiminated in his first stage podium and he grabbed some solid results for himself on the cobbles whilst also being one of Debesay and Rowe's key helpers. Next year he may have to go out to a PT team if we can't give him the experience he needs to hit his full potential, which would be sad for us but an exciting opportunity to sample the biggest cobbled races!

Highlights: Valuable domestique work in the classics and especially being an valuable part of the TTT train.
Lowlights: Not much.
Points: 0 (583rd in Division/20th in Team)
Rider of the Month: 0
Victories: 0
Breakaways: 1
Verdict: We were pleased to have the future Aussie Cancellara with us for 2018 and he was a highly valuable member of our TTT train as well as a solid domestique for flat and cobbled races. He grew a lot in his time with us and we wish him luck as he returns back across the ditch to Bennelong in the Pro Tour!

Highlights: A few great moments, but claiming the opening stage and yellow jersey in Corsica International takes it out.
Lowlights: Some quite under-par sprinting and a lack of cohesiveness or even any plan when riding with Rowe.
Points: 128 (133rd/7th)
Rider of the Month: 0
Victories: 3
Breakaways: 0
Verdict: Quite a decent year for our specialist sprinter who adapted well to our makeshift leadouts to take a few solid victories, and used his wheel-hopping from Strava days to make some other solid stage results. Not quite back on his awesome 2016 level but a solid season for us.

Highlights: His stage win and 2nd on GC in Catalunya (above) and 2nd in the Kenya Mountain classic among others!
Lowlights: Lowlights aplenty sadly, the worst offenders coming in ToME where he positioned himself as one of two or three absolute GC favourites before the last stage but then collapsed, and two awful days in Colombia where he failed an easy top 10 goal despite ample form on the other stages
Points: 572 (32nd/1st)
Rider of the Month: 2 (July and October)
Victories: 2
Breakaways: 3 (1 semi-successful 3rd, one KoM win)
Verdict: There were wonderful highs, terrible lows, drama, grit, the most inconsistency you've ever seen, emotion and a whole lot of fun following Peter Velits' season this year. But although his aging legs gave out on certain days he never raced with less than 100% commitment and even when he looked out of races he fought hard to bring himself back in - case in point a gritty ride on Stage 6 in Austria where he rode back into top 5 contention by grinding the whole peloton off his wheel for a tough stage win, and his KoM win and near stage wins in Maroc in a PT-looking field after dropping in the early mountains. He may drop down another level to CT in 2019 to stay near the top, but if he stays or if he goes he'll be remembered fondly in the end at Xero for leading us to a very good debut PCT season.

Highlights: Some nice domestique work in the hills and medium mountain tours.
Lowlights: No minor scoring to speak of really and an underperformance in his C2 race days.
Points: 23 (345th/10th)
Rider of the Month: 0
Victories: 0
Breakaways: 1
Verdict: Our experienced South African was a cool hand as a road captain wherever he raced and passed on invaluable experience to our young climbers. He didn't do as well as we may have liked in the minor scoring and in his C2 outing in the Tour de San Luis, but his on and off-the bike experience and mentoring of our younger riders and domestique work made him a very solid addition to our roster who we look forward to having back next year if he would have us.

@Croatia - Thanks a lot And I guess you would have put Stan into second in the vote?

@Abhishek - Definitely understand a Rowe vote with his hugely surprising Baltic, IJsselmeer and Cheshire efforts. For me they more balanced out some of the underperformances though (still hugely happy with him overall ). Thank you very much

Just six riders remaining from our original 11th-placed outfit in the 2016 Continental Tour, and only three (Davison, Kossohorou and Novardianto) have rode three full seasons for the team. No leaders from our original line-up remain either. It's no surprise to see those three as the three longest serving riders, as they are three of the most loyal to the project. However the three leaders also in the top 10 (Salinas, Clarke, Diggle) were also very loyal and it's sad to see they didn't stay for more years.

No surprise to see Roux topping this chart due to his huge year in 2017 backed up by a solid PCT showing this season. Velits' big 2018 edges out Bennett's two years, and the same for Bazhkou and Diggle and Debesay and Clarke - the CT battlers competing with those who had a go with the bigger PCT points scales and RDs. Novardianto as the only rider to never be a leader who features in the top 10 thanks to his stunning 2016 year.

Single Season Record: 631 (Anthony Roux, 2017)

As you can see outside of Roux in the CT we've never had big winners in our team to get the classics and GCs - of our 21 wins 18 have been stages. However in the last two years that number of stage wins have left us quite satisfied anyway. Anthony Roux way out ahead of course here thanks to his seven wins in the CT in 2017.

Single Season Record: 7 (Anthony Roux, 2017)

Basically we found all the U23, classification and NC wins - but it didn't fit on the page for the wins table above. But we'd still like to honour the seven riders who have won minor classifications for us - nobody having done it more than once! So we expanded the jerseys to their own table showing what type was won. Three points, three mountains, and one U25.

Still an unbalanced table with many just here for one year at the top due to our one year of higher wages in PCT. Debesay leading the way due to his huge contract in the FA this year.

Single Season Record: €365,000 (Mekseb Debesay, 2018)

A surprising winner here for sure and likely to be the all-time best for our team - Jean Helwani, on loan from Bouygues Telecom in 2016, was being paid no wage by us and in return got a single point from a breakaway somewhere, making for an infinite or undefined wage per point! In terms of real riders, Roux and Bazhkou lead the way due to their low wages and extremely good returns - both nearly half the cost per point of the next best riders, our other low-wage leaders Salinas and Clarke from the CT days.

No surprise to see our three men with three years leading this competition, with Novardianto holding a healthy lead in this leaderboard due to his enthusiasm and toughness for such a young rider. Kennett is the best of those who have rode two full years, just edging out Schleck. Roux is the best leader at 107, just ahead of Diggle's 106. Jams certainly has made it his mission to finish his career as the leader of this ranking - as well as the next one!

Jamalidin Novardianto obviously leads this ranking too thanks to his huge 2016 and being up there in our rankings for the two years after. However thanks to the extra PCT RDs another enthusiastic young gun, Joseph Areruya, nearly halved the gap to our Indonesian in just one year this year. Davison's solid standard of 2-3 per season sees him round off the podium. It seems like it'll take some rider to every surpass Jams in this one! This ranking only counts morning breakaways and not mid-stage attacks.

Finally it's a ranking of our own making - the winners of the HQ Rider of the Month Awards. The top two, Roux and Novardianto, benefit from big years (Jams got 3 in 2016, Roux got 4 in 2017). As you can see it's been very spread out over the years, and the pedants will notice we've missed four months of our existence! These are the months where nobody has done anything (we think).

@knockout - Yeah, you should Would be really interesting to see over 5+ years of a team.
- Yes he is
- Yes it was, noticed that when looking at the rankings at the end of the season. Just a crazy season and the fact there was clear awful luck and AI at different points meaning it could have easily been 700+ shows how beasty he was last year.
- Yeah he is, blame Vien!

@roturn - Thanks Well I count it as 2/3 focus nations due to 3 others being African but yeah just one Kiwi is a bit surprising. Have to remember though that there were three CT NZ teams in my first year plus Oz and you with interests in the market! And yeah Novardianto is very cool, in 2016 his breakaway KMs were nuts but sadly 2017 his FL was too high but he still got a few stage podiums, and a mediocre year this year. Hopefully he'll get back to it soon with his sexy new stats