Thanks for the update SN, highly anticipated and of great interest as always!
Some good and bad for Nutresa - knew March had been disappointing mainly in the stage races + we had a lot of RD's expended so really not a good return. April was starting to look the same, but then Romandie righted the ship at the end. We have used the most RD's in the division, so not too much of a surprise to see the big difference between the current and projected standings. Mentioned before, but nice to actually have the points on the board rather than projected! Nonetheless, constantly striving to up the PPRD in the direction of 15+ and on towards 20. With over half our RD's spent, a few quieter months coming up as we have a number of training camps planned in preparation for the Tour de France in July. May, June + July all have of the order of 10RD's each, so we will be a spectator a little more often than participant in PCT calendar for a while.
As far as the rest of the table goes, starting to take on a not too surprising shape. With the cobbled season nearly over, those teams that focus heavily on that terrain or have primary leader in that area might start to slide a little - I would include AMEX, Evonik (Boonen) and Azteca (Summerhill) in that bracket. Expecting to see Tom-Tom start to make a positive move when Hugenhaben kicks off, and that ONCE will start to make some headway soon, although may remain on the fringes of the relegation line medium term.
I may be wrong, but suspect a lot of the teams in and around relegation are all going to be riding ToA which may well be a defining battleground for the survival dog-fight come that part of the season. Then again that is a long way off yet!
Okay. Didn't commented in the morning as I wanted to put in a longer analysis but since I don't get on my laptop until tomorrow evening at the earliest my post will be a bit shorter.
I still love how well my team is performing. Did not expected to be a serious threat in the promotion battle but more likely expected to just be in the top ten by only some seven points again.
Since I can't expect LLS to podium every stage race of the season and as Scorchio wrote in his great analysis the cobble season is mostly done I expect to lose a bit. Although one should keep in mind that Boonen is also an elite sprinter so he will not lose as much points as pure cobblers like Summerhill.
It's well possible that I can keep my (predicted) position for another two months but I will lose ground in July and August ( I think) as my two point scorer are rested a lot there.
It's quite cool to see LLS so high in the individual rankings but im also very glad for fellow promoted team Bonsucro and their star rider.
This season feels quite different to last year's. I only really looked at the position fight against direct rivals in august or even September while this season I already look at the top teams a lot. This part of the season has began quickly
Another great two months for Gazelle
Monfort, Koren and Kangert are doing such an impressive job that we get away with our relatively weak cobble season.
There are now six excellent teams with 20+ PpRD breathing down our neck though. Looking forward to an exciting struggle for the top positions in the coming months!
We seem to be intent on keeping our tradtion of a slow start to the season it did pick up a bit and with a better Tour of Romandie we would be higher but Intxausti missing points that he should have has destroyed us really and there is no coming back from that really
Thanks for the update, SN!
The surprising points by Taramarcaz at E3Prijs prevents us from a total desaster. Cataldo is steady scoring, but if Di Maggio won't start providing soon... it might not be enough for PCT.
Happy for Evonik and Bonsucro, shows you can challenge the best as a promoted team just by tacking some risks and doing the right pics.
Heads up to the Sauber guys, season is still to early to call.
At this point I don't give a damn about my Top 15 goal, avoiding relegation it is. I'd better pray to the God of MG to get some more luck in the remainder of the season.
Huge props to Evonik and Bonsucro though, showing that a promoted team doesn't have to be as crappy as us.
Beside ONCE(who have also been unlucky I think) everyone under us seems significantly weaker to me, but well, I can't exclude anything.
In terms of team quality we should basically be upper half, though.
I'm surprised to see we actually gained two spots, because I feel we weren't great in that part of the season. But we did drop seven spots in the projected rankings, way down to 20th, which is definitely not something I'd like to happen. Macca's poor performance in South Africa alongside Marquez' below par showing in Vancouver will definitely have contributed to the drop there, we should have scored more there.
