@redordead: Thank you sir. My concern with Dion Smith is the obvious mountain focus from a number of the CT squads. It'll be interesting if his acceleration and fight attributes get him in position to contend at times. I can't see him winning any races unless Jorgensen is a no-show at various C2 events, but nevertheless he should be a useful scorer for us.

@AbhishekLFC: The final update shall be coming soon, with the full leadership and then the full team...but quite early on in transfers we'd managed to secure some strong riders, albeit with lower main stats than ideal, looking at the competition. I hope our focus on the secondaries will pay off.

Laurens147: Duvel-Tsingtao management hopes so, we had a stated ambition of promoting straight away and hopefully Van Lerberghe will have a big part to play. In my first go-around, I had Yoeri Havik playing the sprinty cobbly guy role, but he packed a proper punch. Van Lerberghe is more of your typical cobbler, but with a number of CT teams completely neglecting the cobbles this year, we're really hoping for a solid points haul there.

Seems we both decided to go for a Belgian/Chinese focus this offseason, that was surprising! But I'm glad Changsheng and Liu will get used to the Belgian way of life this year...their stomachs will be more accustomed to the Belgian diet when they come to Duvel-Tsingtao in future

SotD: Thank you mate, and unfortunate we couldn't get a deal done this offseason. I like the riders, glad to hear they are liked elsewhere as well...hopefully that will increase our commercial revenues so we can take part in some of the outrageous training spends in future offseasons

*We pay half of Egger's total €60,000 wage
**We pay €100,000 of Brenner's €245,000 wage
***We pay half of Van Tricht's €50,000 wage

The plan this offseason was to build a roster capable of both making our sponsors proud (50%+ domestic focus) and getting us into the PCT at first time of asking.

While we achieved the home country ambitions, the rest of the CT division managers certainly are getting wiser, and our initial roster looks to be slightly above average but not by much. I like our stage race contingent, with Smith among the top GC riders in the division, along with two capable domestiques in Figueiredo and Egger, but others have had similar laser focus on the mountains.

In the hills, we likely won't able to compete with the likes of Eiking, Moscon or Bystrom, but in longer races with steeper hills, Lyu can punch above his weight (ba-dum-tss ). Hermans provides wild card possibilities if he's feeling well on the day and can make it into a breakaway.

We've never been a fan of devoting large wages to time trials, so didn't this year. Same with sprints, which have historically been a crapshoot. Instead, we focused on cobbles, very on-brand for a Belgian team. Van Lerberghe was marked early on as a key target and we were thrilled to secure him for such a cheap wage, along with three useful helpers in Roosen, Noppe and Dewulf. Then we saw Zepuntke in the division...

Overall, management is looking forward to the season with a likeable squad, with youth on our side. We just hope the PCM gods smile kindly on us - rest assured we'll be hoping to get them lightly buzzed on Duvel before simming the races

Thanks for reading!

@Ulrich Ulriksen: I do hope that Zhao bucks my historic trend of viewing sprint points as a bonus and becomes a reliable point scorer. I'm just hesitant to place too much emphasis on the sprints as there is always a decent amount of competition with much higher pure sprint rating. I think his resistance and acceleration stats will help him out, though. I'm hoping we have enough to sneak into promotion spots, but it'll be close!

@DarkWolf: Thank you for the well wishes, the sponsors are happy for sure, but will team management be happy at the end of the season? It all remains to be seen, looking forward to seeing the first results come through! Good luck to you in the PCT.

@AbhishekLFC: Agreed, all-terrain involvement means no races are throwaways, which is always nice to keep the interest high throughout the year! I like our depth in that most of our riders have very solid secondary stats to help the leaders, but how PCM will treat them is going to be an interesting one, if they need to take an extra burden to get our slightly substandard leaders in a better position. I do have concerns about Smith and Lyu, seeing the competition elsewhere, but their secondary stats (again) should help them stay in contact. I certainly tried to emulate one Phillips CT team!

Aycon97: I hope we'll be able to score consistently, so it'll be more a case of slow and steady comes in second-fifth this year! Nobody has a chance vs the Newton juggernauts, but you, jt, and Dippofix have done really well to build competitive teams from ground zero as well. Looking forward to the season, as I'm sure you are as well!

Side note: Ezee is an absolute legend, with 6 kits in the CT peloton being produced by their awesome Photoshop ( ) abilities. Yours will be a prominent one in multiple races, I'm sure.

As stated elsewhere, we feel we are right on the cusp of cracking into the promotion spots in CT this season, but we've pushed ourselves when setting the goal, with the hope that we could build a team in free agency that would be competitive. This will be close, but we're quietly confident.

All of the race goals are achievable aside from Volta a Catalunya, which will likely see Jorgenson cantering to victory, pending an injury/punctures on every stage!

We think we've been quite savvy with the Tour du Faso goal in particular, with La Tropicale Amissa Bongo as a race clash, hopefully occupying support riders that could've otherwise been useful on a largely flat cobble stage race.

A Top 10 at Giro del Trentino will be a tough ask, with the majority of the CT stage race/climbing contingent in attendance, so Dion Smith and our domestiques will need to be on top form.

And we believe we can just sneak a Top 10 at the 1 Jour de Dunkerque if other top cobblers have been prioritised for the Ronde van Vlaanderen.

An unreal start to the season, Quinten Hermans launched at the right time and overcame a strong McCormick to take the win in Aotearoa. This exceeded our expectations but was an awesome way to begin Duvel-Tsingtao's existence.

Fun fact: the night before the race, Hermans painted himself in Maori war paint and did the haka, to get amped up. At least that's what he told team directeurs the morning of the race. No teammates could corroborate his story. When cleaning the riders' sleeping quarters during the race, directeurs found 14 empty bottles of Duvel tucked under Hermans' bed.

Xianjing Lyu and Mike Aaron Egger added minor points.

Always a tricky race to predict in Thailand, the breakaway stayed away and SEE Turtles picked up a surprise result with one of their Ecuadorian talents. Stan Dewulf tried to bridge the gap to the breakaway with other strong roleurs but couldn't make the catch. Still though, a strong effort by the domestique.

Jingbiao Zhao shot through the pack and managed to just nick 7th place at the line for a 'victory' among the peloton sprinters, which is an encouraging sign for the season to come. Dewulf managed to hold on for 15th, adding to a solid points tally for Duvel-Tsingtao's second race.

A home race for Tsingtao, in Yanqing district, and the first C1 race on Duvel-Tsingtao's calendar. This was one to chalk up to the Tsingtao flowing the night before and the antics of team directeur, Jean Wauters, who cajoled the team along to karaoke until 3am the night of the race.

The team wanted to stay in bed, and might as well just have done that. A waste of a trip to China and to C1 level, where we are clearly overmatched, but after the flying start to the season, no alarm bells are going off.

10 days in Venezuela gave team directeurs some food for thought and exciting viewing. With four stages available for sprinters, Jingbiao Zhao managed to pick up some solid results including second place on stage 3, and rode in the green jersey for 2 stages. Overall a successful tour for the sprint contingent.

In the mountains, Dion Smith delivered on his promise to make things entertaining. Figueiredo and Egger provided strong mountain goat support and chipped in on scoring, but Dion was the star of the show - hopefully in future races his efforts will be paid off with big points scoring.

King Lok Cheung was a bit of a waste on stage 10, but surely was a helpful rider to have in the peloton throughout the tour.

Our overall self-granted score for the race is a B.

From the moment the race went off, our guys were up to the task. Bert Van Lerberghe made things difficult upfront and highlighted Duvel-Tsingtao's unwillingness to bring back the break. Then once the break was brought back, Quinten Hermans went on the attack, stretching down the peloton to as low as 23 riders.

Even better, Hermans dropped back to lead out Lyu for the final sprint, which he launched just a moment too early and let Raileanu come back to secure the win for Babymetal. Still, nearly a picture-perfect strategic race by the team. Team management is thrilled.

@liefwarrior: The start to the season has absolutely met and even exceeded expectations in moments. The incentive structure at the team is such that palmares = kegs for the individual in question. But because a keg is a slightly heavy ask for an individual, the team ends up sportingly helping out. It's basically a constant frat party in the Duvel-Tsingtao team camp at the moment.

Caspi: Team management has sanctioned the team directeur for his indiscretions in China, pre-Badaling. But it was mainly for his off-tone singing than for poor team performance. If his singing voice improves and his confidence comes back, we could be in trouble...since then he's thankfully been keeping himself to himself at pre-race functions and the results keep on flowing.