About what could have been expected on the final stage although Cosnefroy should probably outperform Conci on such a stage.
Conci drops 1 place from 7th to 8th in the GC which is a very solid result given the field here. Cosnefroy climbing up from 17th to 14th in the final stage is a success too, he's performed really well as a number 2 to Conci in these sorts of races.
Thanks Abhi for the reports throughout!! Phinney and Wirtgen 1-2 not a surprise and you'd expect it to remain this way in similar races throughout the season.
About as good as we could have possibly hoped! With Phinney and Wirtgen, it was always a race for the last podium spot and Dunbar rode the perfect race to get there. A super solid final TT from him to set up that result and overtake Bernal by a whisker is the perfect start to the season for him! 100x better than last seasons opener in Hong Kong, if he keeps this up he might keep us clear of relegation danger yet again.
Thanks for the reports, and congrats to MOL and SN on his amazing start to the season.
Strong final TT from Paillot! Very happy with 7th place in the GC, he has far exceeded my expectations in his first two races this season. Bit weaker from Gonzalez Salas, but hopefully he can improve when we get to the non-hilly TT races.
Bernal and Dunbar were too good to challenge, but I'm still elated to see Ganna confirm his strong spring form with 5th overall here!
Thanks to the attentive team positioning as a whole yesterday, we get significant depth points from Stork (Top 20!), Cavagna, O'Brien and Cemazar (who did indeed get on the U25 podium!) to supplement Filippo's, which should see us surpass the 200 points mark from just three days of PT HC racing.
Truly valuable performances from the entire team over the past week, with most of the upcoming races not suiting us.
Congratulations to MOL who get what they paid for, and thanks Abhi for your reporting!
Take away the time loss on stage and Dennis would have finished just outside the top ten, which would have been good. Now we get a lot of nothing again, sadly.
Thanks for the reports AbhishekLFC and congrats jaxika!
This is just an incredibly frustrating race for me. Why? Let's explain it with some comparisons:
GC
14
Benoit Cosnefroy
ZARA - Irizar
+ 1'46
15
Nicolas Alejandro Cabrera
EA Vesuvio
+ 1'53
16
Lawson Craddock
Cedevita
s.t.
17
Ethan Hayter
cycleYorkshire
+ 1'55
19
Janos Pelikan
EA Vesuvio
+ 2'00
20
Florian Stork
Team Puma - SAP
+ 2'03
---
---
---
---
52
Alexys Brunel
Jura GIANTS
+ 3'41
53
Stefan Bissegger
Jura GIANTS
s.t.
54
Stefan Kung
Jura GIANTS
+ 3'42
---
---
---
---
66
Colin Stüssi
Jura GIANTS
+ 3'53
Bissegger and Brunel lost 2" to Cosnefroy in the two ITTs. Kung lost 3, all of which is perfectly fine. Kung is a bit better uphill, Brunel about the same as Cosnefroy. All three lose 2 minutes on the hilly stage.
Cabrera is a stronger climber, so I compare him to Stüssi. Stüssi is far better uphill, and lost 7" in the TTs (which I'm perfectly fine with, too). Stüssi loses 2 minutes on the uhpill stage.
It's a similar case with Craddock, Hayter, Pelikan and Stork - all of which aren't better, at least not by 30 positions, than my riders.
But it looks like actual skills don't count at all in these races. I mean, it's completely ridiculous that McNulty, Haig or Oomen can't even keep up with someone like Lammertink on a hilly stage, which is even far worse than what happened to my team.
To me, it looks like any team who brought an 80+ TTer basically got a big depth result gifted on top (except maybe for ZARA, where even 78+ was enough). There are 10 PCT riders in the GC Top 50, which does not reflect the actual skills by any means. The TT stages were fine - which is the only good thing I can find so far about the new engine.
But in the hilly stage, being in the "right" team actually mattered far more than having any actual puncheur skills. Which for me kills a lot of motivation, as it's purely random whether you can actually get something from a race or not.
I actually wonder if sending Rekita - my best TTer (79), but definitely a worse allround rider than those I actually sent - would have made some miracles and suddenly the whole team would've made the split on S2. It could have worked, but it shouldn't. I might even be on the "right" side later in the season, if my TTers are good enough for PCT races, but what I'd actually like to see would be races decided by skills, not by PCM favours.
I went mainly for those hilly stage races with TTs this year, but Hong Kong already was disappointing (having the wrong leaders picked by the engine), and Ukraine is an outright disaster. We leave with 12 points, whereas we should have scored 60+, or even more with some luck. It may not be a big deal in the end (and I admit I've been more than lucky in other races), but it's stages like S2 that are just killing my motivation.
Sorry for the rant - I just don't get why we were so completely ignored (alongside most other PCT teams). But at least the top of the GC is as expected - big congrats to Phinney; winning all three stages even after declining is quite a feat. Wirtgen is already looking like a worthy successor, though, just having to wait for maybe 2 more years to take over. EA had an insane race (again) nonetheless, with 4 in the Top 20, and 7 in the Top 33...
Thanks for the reports to Abhi, and sorry for complaining so much - definitely not against you, just against the engine (which so far feels like the worst one in my MG career).
Well definitely not the race I wanted. I know Bobridge declined but I thought he'd get better then 23rd. Not what I wanted to happen and quite unhappy with the result.
Well apparently McNulty thought the goal was a top 10 in the U25 which he achieved a with a brillant 5th place.
Some thoughts on the AI which I will spoiler for those who prefer not to have them.
Spoiler
I think Fab's analysis is right on. First the engine is less selective, not sure if that is inaccurate, but given how deep the mangame peloton is it is probably exaggerated in the mangame (also the final S2 climb is only 3.5k at like 7% so not that hard). Then when it isn't selective it all depends on who the AI sees are favorites. Clearly here all the 78+ TTers were seen as favorites and got protected and given the race isn't that hard, key support riders survive as well. We benefitted from that in Hong Kong but suffered from the deeper peloton here. I do think the game can adapt. There are some team design lessons and I am more optimistic about tweaking the parcours in a race like this that has always focused on GC guys than I am on a pure hilly/TT race. And credit to the managers who realized sending a top TTer here was a good gamble.
