Amusingly, I think, Johan Le Bon was the top favourite to win Tro-Bro Leon. The course was flat as a pancake, with a few cobbled sectors including two in the final kilometres. So it became an "uneven" mass sprint. Our two sprinters Franczak and Meinert (both now SPR 75) finished 5th and 6th, easily fulfilling the small objective. But they couldn't beat Le Bon (SPR 61), who was 4th, nor the three riders ahead of him, Lemoine, Hoogerland and Baugnies, all better sprinters than Le Bon.
Edited by Ripley on 09-05-2019 11:10
Races like Tro-Bro Leon at least allow our mediocre sprinters to justify their exorbitant wages. We never expected anything from Paris-Roubaix anyway, so yeah, it was sit back and watch. Mostly Sagan, who worked his way further to the front the whole time, but he was too late to get more out of the race.
To be honest, I was seriously considering just simulating the Ardennes Week. A top 10 result seemed rather unlikely. But I gave it a shot after all and the races went better than expected. Hoem and Rafael Silva (both now HIL 77) would share the captaincy in all three races.
Amstel Gold Race
Race squad: Aregger, Bibby, Brown, Hoem, Lemesle, Bruno Silva, Rafael Silva, Wojtaszik
We got tantalisingly close to the top 10 in the Amstel Gold Race. Hoem failed to make the E3 of 7 riders who were chasing Gilbert, who rode to a solo victory, and the E2 with Costa, Dan Martin, Sagan and Ulissi. But Rafael Silva made it into that E3, 6th was theoretically possible, sadly he was outsprinted by all the other riders in the group, finishing a good 12th. Hoem launched a late attack from E5 and ended 16th.
Top 10: Gilbert, Rui Costa, Dan Martin, Peter Sagan, Ulissi, Betancur, Jungels, Moser, Ponzi, Jelle Vanendert, 12. Rafael Silva
If only we'd known... in the Fleche Wallone we again got close to the top 10 and that despite the fact that the victory came from an early and mid-stage breakaway! Early on Gatto, Navardauskas and Dennis Vanendert escaped. With 120 km to go and an advantage of nearly 8 minutes for the trio, another round of attacks came and Battaglin, Capecchi, Jungels and De Clerq eventually caught up to the others and those 7 riders would decide the race between them. We surely could have gotten a man into that group. Betancur then attacked with 40 km to go, Nibali, Quintana and Rui Costa joined him, but the rivalry was too great and they were caught again.
Heading into the finale, the breakaway was only a minute or so ahead, but constant attacks from the peloton which were shut down again made the advantage grow. Jungels attacked from the front and rode to a solo victory. With 7 km to go, we went for it, our top men Silva and Hoem attacked and had 30 seconds on the peloton as they hit the Mur. But Ulissi, Cancellara, Valverde, Jelle Vanendert and Slagter overtook them just before the finish line and they ended 13th and 14th. Victory from a breakaway, a seldom occurance in such a prestigious race.
Top 10: Jungels, Gatto, Capecchi, Battaglin, De Clercq, Dennis Vanendert, Navardauskas, Ulissi, Cancellara, Jelle Vanendert, 13. Rafael Silva
Liege-Bastogne-Liege
Race squad: Bettencourt, Brown, Hoem, Laengen, Lemesle, Bruno Silva, Rafael Silva, Wojtasik
12th in Amstel Gold, 13th in Fleche Wallone... and now 11th in Liege-Bastogne-Liege. In Holland Hoem missed the important move, this time it was Silva. Gilbert and Costa attacked and the Belgian would go on to win the race. Just three riders chased them at first, Betancur, Valverde and Kwiatkowski. Three more riders were ahead but not cooperating when Hoem attacked, passing those three, hoping against hope for a 6th place. But sadly, more attacks came, by Dan Martin, then Cancellara, Jungels and Jelle Vanendert. 10th was still possible, but Nibali's sprint was good enough to overtake Hoem at the last second.
Top 10: Gilbert, Rui Costa, Betancur, Valverde, Kwiatkowski, Cancellara, Dan Martin, Jungels, Jelle Vanendert, Nibali, 11. Hoem
That was certainly more than we expected, a shame that we didn't quite make the top 10 in any of the races. Other teams have scored and Aviva is now only ahead of Garmin in the WT team rankings.
@croatia: Definitely good results and encouraging for future races, especially since both can still improve.
April 2016: Giro del Trentino
*** goal: Stage Win
Race squad: Bolivar, Brown, Del Pino, Garby, Golem, Morton
On the opening day we faced a straightforward hilly stage with just one climb towards the end and a steep descent to the finish line. Morton's attack formed a first breakaway of 9 riders, the peloton eventually chased it down, more attacks followed, the pace was high for a long time and our riders were hanging on at the back of the peloton. Eventually, it slowed down, 4 riders were up front and we sent Garby after them. It was the first real outing for the 24-year old Dane (MON 72 HIL 72).
He reached the strong group, especially Zardini (HIL 77) outclassed Garby on paper. But he recovered most of his energy at the back of the group as it reached the only hill, 6 km long. Lövquist attacked, Garby rode a high steady pace, helped the group catch Lövquist at the summit and then he attacked into the descent and the others couldn't keep up. Garby won the stage 43'' ahead of Lövquist and 1'08'' ahead of the peloton, winning all jerseys for the day and fulfilling the 3-star goal. What a brilliant first breakaway for Marc Garby, his first professional victory and Aviva's third win of the season.
He lost the race lead a day later, Aviva was last in the TTT. The mountainous stage 3 was very long, over 220 km, Brown was in the breakaway but they were caught even before the final climb started. Next was a hilly stage and Bolivar (MON 74 HIL 73) was part of the early breakaway which decided the stage. But he couldn't keep up with Amador in the finale, who won by 1'16'', though he came 2nd and beat Bono, Kadri, Chainel, Brutt and Barta.
The final stage was mountainous again, just a couple of climbs on a short stage, a cat. 2 followed by a MTF, Sega di Ala. The breakaway consisted of just two riders, Del Pino and Jackson Rodriguez. We had a good feeling about this matchup, Del Pino is the slightly better climber. However, he must have had an undiagnosed illness or injury, had had trouble keeping up with Rodriguez on the first climb and on the final climb it was no contest. Within 3 kilometres Del Pino lost 5 minutes, Rodriguez easily won the stage, Del Pino was 33rd, 11'18'' behind. Just as well that Garby fulfilled the goal early on. 6 out of 10 objectives completed so far, not bad.
Mollema beat Barguil on both mountian stage, but the Dutchman lost more than a minute on the hilly stage 4 and that proved fatal. Barguil wins by 32'', Talansky completes the podium.
The Tour de Romandie started with a short prologue which is followed by two flat stages, the only mountain stage, a hilly stage and then a flat 20 km ITT on the last day. I decided to give stage 3 a try, it was flat but there was a late-ish cat. 2 which might give the breakaway an edge and we were in need of WT points. Manaia made the escape group, but it was futile, the peloton caught the escapees pretty early.
Well, I'd promised to tell you about the low point of the season and it's coming right now. I had managed to forget about this until I read my notes. So here's what happened: Manaia was caught, maybe the mountain stage tomorrow will be more successful. To make our next breakaway rider as unthreatening as possible, I set all riders on keep position, 32 effort, and set the game speed to 8x.
They all missed the time limit! Waterloo! This was the end of the Romandie for Aviva Cycling! 8 DNFs! On a flat stage where our riders were still in the peloton with, what, 20 km to go. In 100+ PCM seasons this never happened before. I was dimly aware that there might be a risk, when you have a bunch of your own riders behind the peloton all on keep position orders they slow down to a crawl, but I did not believe it could end so badly. Lesson learned, I hope.
So the rest of the Romandie happened without us, but to be honest, it dind't really matter, breakaways didn't stand a chance anyway. The queen stage to Anzere, won by Quintana, wasn't exactly decisive, 9 riders finished within 9'' of each other. The hilly stage 5 produced slightly bigger gaps and went to Nibali. The Italian rode a good time trial on the final stage, enough to win the race 4'' ahead of Kwiatkowski and 13'' ahead of Kreuziger, Uran missed the podium by 4''. Then came Velits, Quintana, Froome, Pinot, Contador and Ion Izagirre.
Race squad: Bolivar, Franczak, Laengen, Manaia, Morton, Bruno Silva
Before we get to the Giro, let's quickly wrap up the Tour of California, which attracted a strong field of riders this year. To give you an idea, here's the final top 10: Rui Costa, Betancur, Adam Yates, Nerz, Peter Sagan, Valverde, Van den Broeck, Jungels, Poels and Gilbert. With two ITTs and four flat stages, our only realistic chance would be the second mountain stage, stage 7, ending on Mount Diablo. Of course we had riders in earlier breakaways, too, but as expected, they didn't pan out.
We saved our best man for the job, Bolivar, and he slipped into the breakaway that made it to the foot of the climb with an advantage of 7 minutes, which proved to be sufficient. The only rider who could match Bolivar's climbing skill was Antuna*, the Spaniard attacked twice on the lower half of the slope and wasted too much energy. Bolivar caught him, with a struggling Stybar in tow, and then dropped them both to win the stage by over a minute and fulfil the objective. A great result and a very happy sponsor. A slight shame: Both Antuna and Bolivar collected 40 KOM points, but the jersey was awarded to the Cofidis rider.
*Sorry about the missing eñe, I'll do without any special letters or accents except for my native umlaute.
No pressure for Aviva in our first Grand Tour. We'd love to win a stage and the KOM classification. Experience shows that the latter is often an attainable goal. The favourites for the pink jersey were the winners of the previous two editions, Kreuziger (2015) and Porte (2014). Nibali won the Romandie and should complete the podium, with Mollema and Uran named as outside favourites, though Mollema plays second fiddle to Nibali in the Astana team.
The prologue was won by the legendary Alex Dowsett. Three of the next four stages were flat and all won by Mark Cavendish. The Manxman had not claimed a single victory so far this season, now he's back in with a shout. However, that would be the end of his spell, he only added one more top 10 result and finished 7th in the points classification.
Breakaways were chased down relentlessly in the first two weeks, even when nobody was any threat in the GC. Ulissi was especially ruthless and won stages 7, 11, 12 and 13, he went on to win the points rankings well ahead of the sprinters. Hoem had been in the unsuccessful breakaways on the two hilly stages 6 and 7 and was wearing the climber's jersey for a couple of days. He retired on stage 9 after losing the jersey, we don't want him to build up tiredness, we need him for the second half of the season.
The first mountain stage, on day 8 up the Monte Terminillo, was won by Uran just ahead of Porte, Kreuziger and Nibali lost 33'', everybody else at least 1'23''. The Giro really started with stage 14, six of the next seven stages were mountainous. We didn't join the breakaway on stages 14 and 15. Winning the climber's jersey was down to just one rider, Jesus Del Pino, the only other riders who would finish the Giro were Hansen and Lemesle, so Del Pino had to bide his time.
He eventually slipped into the early breakaway on stage 17. He finished 4th, a pretty impressive result considering none of the 10 breakaway companions had a worse MON skill than him. Del Pino's fortune was that the other riders kept attacking from the group throughout the stage. However, with everybody fighting for the KOM points Del Pino only ended up with 4 of them. Could he still win the classification? Stages 19 and 20 offer HC climbs along the route, so in theory it's still possible.
Let's start the second half of the report with Aviva's best result of the Giro, which came on stage 18. On a totally flat stage to Brescia our sprinter Meinert was part of a 9-man breakaway which was just strong enough to stay ahead and decide the stage. The high speed in the finale robbed Meinert of most of his energy reserves but he was able to collect a 2nd place, only beaten by Van Emden. Not the stage win we were hoping for, but a good result nonetheless and a few valuable WT points.
The GC fight had been on hold between stages 8 and 14. Uran had won stage 8, but FDJ's TTT had been weak and so Sky's Porte slipped into pink. Stage 14 featured only one cat. 1 climb and a flat finale, most GC favourites arrived together, but Mollema lost a minute, Orica's captain Majka 2 minutes. Stage 15 ended atop the Zoncolan and went to the breakaway by a large margin, Dennis Vanendert won the stage. Porte attacked in the finale and gained 20'' on Uran and Nibali, with Kreuziger and Mollema losing additional seconds.
Richie Porte then won the mountain time trial a day later and extended his lead, just by a few seconds against most of the top 10. Stage 17, where Del Pino placed 4th, seemed fairly simple with an easy if irregular final climb. But once again the man in pink extended his lead, gaining 13'' on Mollema and Kreuziger and 34'' on his closest rivals, Uran and Nibali.
Which brings us to stage 19 from Brescia to Aprica. If Del Pino really wanted to become King of the Mountains, he had to start scoring big now. There were two cat. 1 and a HC climb on the way to the finish line. Del Pino made the breakaway while the current classification leader Rubiano (who had collected points on stages 11, 14 and 17) was absent. Del Pino had little trouble collecting top points on the three big summits, altogether he collected 111, taking his total up to 115 and within striking distance of Rubiano's 126.
The best breakaway riders just managed to hold off the favourites. Wellens won ahead of Armee, Tschopp, Sorensen and Del Pino. Our man finished just ahead of Richie Porte, who made his Giro victory just about certain with this stage. He had attacked and left behind the rest on the HC climb, he was 1'16'' faster than Uran and 2'09'' faster than Nibali, Kreuziger lost his chance of making the podium, he was another minute behind Nibali, together with Mollema. Of the rest of the top 10 only Majka improved his position, everybody else lost over 7 minutes to Porte.
Despite a lack of freshness it was imperative for Del Pino to get into the final breakaway of the Giro. He managed it and once more Rubiano was MIA, a slight shame that he made it so easy for Del Pino to achieve such a prestigious result. Del Pino did way more than he had to, adding 81 more points to his total. He had to let the others go in the end, they were stronger than him anyway. Intxausti won the stage ahead of Fuglsang, Kelderman, Caruso and Denifl.
Of the top 5, once more Porte was the strongest, only Uran kept up with him, the rest lost 30 seconds. Ulissi did surprisingly well and was best of the rest, secuing his 6th overall ahead of the Sky riders Sergio Henao and Talansky, who had been riding in support of Porte.
The Giro 2016 finished with a 15 km hilly ITT. The man in pink won the time trial, his second stage of the race. The top 5 were within 8'' of each other, so it made no difference, in fact, the whole top 10 remained unchanged. So Porte easily repeats his success from 2 years ago, he wins the Giro 3'11'' ahead of Uran and 4'20'' ahead of Nibali. Kreuziger is missing about 90 seconds to the podium, Mollema is 5 minutes behind Nibali. Ulissi, Sergio Henao, Talansky, Majka and Pinot complete the top 10.
A pretty dominant performance by Team Sky, winning the race and placing two more riders in the top 10. Though Sky didn't win the teams classification, that went to Astana, led by Nibali and Mollema. The points jersey is awarded to Ulissi, the most successful rider with 4 stage wins, behind him are Viviani and Bouhanni. Giant's Boswell is the best young rider, a good 10 minutes ahead of Barguil.
Aviva couldn't win a stage, only Meinert got close on stage 18, and we collected just 10 WT points in the 21 days of racing. But the generally unremarkable Del Pino was able to win the KOM classification for us, which our sponsor deems a +++ noteworthy result. For now it makes him the second most popular rider in our squad, only behind Hoem.
However, already at the age of 25 Del Pino has basically maxed out his stats, MON 74 is all he has in him. This coup will remain the crowning achievement of his career. He'll be leaving us at the end of the season and he won't feature again in this story. He'll spend the next four years with Movistar and only has two more notable results, though very good ones, in the Tour of Qinghai Lake 2020 he'll win stage 6, his first victory, and end 2nd overall.
Impressive run by Del Pino, can't believe you made it look so easy on the big stages 19 & 20. Also nice job in California, Bolivar really doing well there.
Romandie though with a hilarious error, I love it you fail, but I guess you'll never do that mistake again. Good that newer PCMs have a green/yellow/red timing for riders endangered of missing the time limit, maybe that was your hint to switch to a newer PCM for your next story
@croatia: Not that I would have bet any moeny on Del Pino before the race, but sometimes it just is that easy. Aviva will collect many KOM jerseys over the years. Let's never talk about that Romandie again.
Btw, I've updated the 2nd post a little, it now include the average AVG of all Aviva riders every season, hopefully showing a nice progression. I'll probably make a chart at some point.
Standings early June 2016 (after the Giro)
Half-way through the season, Aviva (51 pts) is only ahead of Garmin (20) in the important WT team rankings, we're chasing Lampre (100) and Europcar (103). No need to worry, we're now entering the easier second half of the season, with many scoring opportunities. Quickstep is in the lead (873), followed by Katusha (790) and Movistar (754). FDJ's captain Uran (405) is leading the individual standings – while no other FDJ rider has scored a single WT point so far. Degenkolb (340) is still second, after the successful Ardennes Week Gilbert moved up to third (330).
Aviva prevented Ag2r from promotion last season, but it looks very likely we'll see them in the World Tour next year, they have 2085 CQ points, well ahead of IAM (1267) and Qhubeka (1162).
Valverde, Cavendish and especially Nibali have caught up to the other top earners. By WT points, Tony Martin is now clearly the worst of the bunch, 112k for just 1 WT point. But at least he has three ITT victories in minor races under his belt.
Edited by Ripley on 17-05-2019 07:14
I had been looking forward to the Dauphine for quite a while. The team hasn't won many WT stages so far – just one, in fact – but if there ever was an opportunity for another stage win, this was it, or rather, stages 7 and 8 looked perfectly suited to our best rider, Fredy Golem. He hasn't raced much this season because we want him to lead the team in the next two Grand Tours. Half a season of training has improved his MON by +1 to 75, his REC 76 is great for long races and he has one other stat in his favour, DHI 76. Perfect then that all of the mountain stages in this year's Dauphine end with a descent to the finish line.
Pomoshinikov and Aregger had been in unsuccessful breakaways on stages 2 and 3. Stage 5 was the first of three mountain stages, with time gaps still being small we didn't bother with a breakaway rider and our prediction was correct, it became a GC battle and Dan Martin won the stage by 30'' ahead of a bunch of riders. It wasn't the strongest field of riders, which should slightly improve Golem's chances on his target stages 7 and 8.
Stage 7 was pretty straightforward, leading "only" across the Telegraph and Galibier to Briancon. Golem arrived on top of the Galibier with Bonnafond, Edet and Prades and attacked immediately into the descent and the trio was unable to catch him again on the long descent to the finish line, he won by 42 seconds. Congratulations, his first professional victory!
Despite the effort his freshness was still great ahead of the final stage and so he escaped again, fighting with Edet for the mountain jersey, both riders collected 33 points that day, but Golem had 4 more points from the previous stage and took home the jersey. On the last summit, the Col de la Porte, the remaining escapees had been caught by race leader Velits and Dan Martin, this time the descent was even steeper. Golem attacked just before the duo reached him and again he was successful, beating Martin and Velits by 44 seconds.
Now that was a nice confidence boost. Two stages and King of the Mountains, very impressive stuff from Golem. He finished 22nd overall. Velits wins the Dauphine 1'14'' ahead of Dan Martin. The Irishman is the better climber, but Velits took time off him in the time trial and the hilly stage 6. Brajkovic completes the podium, behind him are Coppel, Poels, Mestre, Atapuma, Geniez, Taraamae and Bonnafond. As I said, not the strongest field of riders in this race.
Race squad: Goos, Laengen, Manaia, Morton, Rafael Silva, Wojtasik
The GP d'Argovie was a straightforward circuit with one steeper hill. Rafael Silva was our captain, with good support, especially from Wojtasik. He started the season with HIL 73 but has already reached his maximum, HIL 76. So Wojtasik took the lead when we reached the climb for the last time, only 12 riders could follow him. At the top, Silva attacked and there was nobody on his wheel. He had the energy reserves for a very high pace and won the race by a minute flat. Arashiro just held off Ciolek for 2nd place. With Wojtasik and Goos two more of our riders made the top 10. Another debut victory, in Silva's third season, and another objective completed. Our next one is a 5-star goal, a stage in the Tour de Suisse.
Definitely, and we'll see more of him soon in the TdF. Fredy Golem is a German-speaking Swiss rider. Slightly undernourished, definitely a pure climber. He's a newgen who turned pro last season but nobody picked him up, so he was available last summer. Here's his current stats and potentials.
The 2016 Tour de Suisse is pretty tame, with just one mountain stage. Which is why we didn't nominate Golem for his home race and sent him to the Dauphine instead, a wise decision, I believe.
The prologue went to Dumoulin, the following three stages weren't made for breakaways, though Morton had a go on stage 3, unsuccessfully. We made sure all our riders lost plenty of time before the hilly stage 5 to Frutigen. It wasn't particularly hilly and we were able to get our best bet into the early breakaway, Goos (FLA 71 HIL 73). But it was a strong group, not for the first time Contador is among the escapees, apparently he has a free role in the Astana team, but he's a pure climber and unthreatening on hilly stages (MON 80 HIL 71).
The last climb of the day was on a narrow road and Goos was trapped behind Contador when Albasini attacked. Damnit, PCM, don't do that to me! By the time Goos finally untangled himself Albasini was already 50'' ahead. Nothing to do but attack Contador to secure a 2nd place. But wait a minute, there's Albasini not far ahead, Goos drew closer and closer, caught him with 500 metres to go and outsprinted him easily! I really didn't expect that after getting stuck. So this was Goos' best result of the season, a WT stage win which also completed the final 5-star objective.
Only two days later he found himself in a very similar situation. Roy launched a late attack, but this time Goos could only close the gap, not soon enough to overtake the Frenchman. The other man in the group was once again Contador, he had to settle for 3rd behind Goos. In between Goos' successful escapes Bolivar had a go on the only and very difficult mountain stage, but his breakaway companions were too strong, Rolland won the stage. On the last hilly stage Morton added a 4th place, none other than Diego Ulissi was part of the breakaway and easily won ahead of Lutsenko and Damuseau.
The fight for overall victory was pretty close. Rui Costa took a few seconds off Froome in the prologue, a few more on stage 2 before he won stage 3, 12'' ahead of Froome and Kwiatkowski. Froome then lost a few more seconds on stage 5, before he closed the gap on the only mountain stage, where he was 1'04'' faster than Costa and 1'30'' faster than Kwiatkowski. Had he not lost another 30'' on the hilly stage 8, he would have won. Froome rode a good ITT on the final day, 20'' faster than Kwiatek and over a minute faster than Rui Costa. But Lotto's Portuguese captain won the Tour de Suisse 14'' ahead of Froome and 17'' ahead of Kwiatkowski. Kreuziger was 4th, within a minute of the winner, while Nibali was over 3 minutes behind in 5th. Behind him were Uran, Betancur, Valverde, Wyss and Ulissi.
I'll only give a brief overview for now, you'll have to wait until the new season starts to get a proper look at our new signings. 18 riders have a contract for the 2017 season, we want to fill up the squad with 30 riders, so we have to hire 12 men. We could extend up to 6 contracts, but none of the riders have room to grow, so they'll all be leaving, including Del Pino. Still, just 6 riders leaving the team will probably remain a record during this career.
A wage of 4k is the limit for next season, our total wage bill will be around 100k/month next year, well below the new budget of at least 160k. So only now the wage restriction of this career is really coming into play. The nice side effect is that we can bid on pretty much as many riders as we like, no need to ever use the editor to help with that.
Though a young age is no assurance that a rider still has unused potential – see Del Pino – it seems the best bet to go for young riders. There are two 22-year olds on the market, Jur Kulpaka and Edgar Augusto Riofrio, who turned pro this season and haven't got a team yet, they look promising and will feature in this story in the future, but they are already too good and expensive for us, both AVG 74.
We'll end up with some young riders with AVG 69 to 71, we'll have to wait and see how much potential they have. Hopefully they'll improve even before they join our team. Btw, I never change the contract length the rider asks for, we can easily end up with another Schmäh, who's great but only stayed for a year.
There'll also be one returning rider who already raced for Aviva last season. He wasn't out first choice, far from it. But with the wage restriction the team will usually change drastically from season to season. So we'll try to extend contracts with riders when we can, if they can still improve, and once in a while we'll rehire riders who've been with us before if we don't find more tempting options.
I'm not planning on reporting national championships in this story. In the first two seasons I simulated them all to make promotion a little less easy. Starting in 2016 I play most of them, I like seeing my riders wearing NC jerseys - unlike knockout . But since victories are often cheap, they don't really deserve a mention. Though admittedly they count towards the the victories tally which I do track.
So in fact I lied when I wrote that the Volta Limburg Classic was our second victory of the season, it was actually our third, because Lachlan Morton won the Australian Championships Road Race. We added two more victories in June, Lasse Hansen won in Denmark and Rafael Silva in Portugal. I'll add NC wins to the season overview in the 2nd post and won't mention them otherwise unless I have a good reason.
We never expected anything from Paris-Roubaix anyway, so yeah, it was sit back and watch. Mostly Sagan, who worked his way further to the front the whole time, but he was too late to get more out of the race.
you fail, but I guess you'll never do that mistake again. Good that newer PCMs have a green/yellow/red timing for riders endangered of missing the time limit, maybe that was your hint to switch to a newer PCM for your next story 
