As I expected, we were not able to live up to the preview rankings here. 4th place being the first one without stage points definitely isn't too fun. Thought we had a shot at 8th on GC, but Chamarro really got carried by Carrefour's setup to hop us.
In the end, we definitely didn't get the points we wanted out of this race, but it wasn't catastrophic or anything.
Congrats to Aidan and thanks to Gustav for some awesome reports!
RIP Exxon Duke, David Veilleux, Double Feature, and Monster Energy
Super happy with that last stage, we've never really been a good time trial outfit so it was nice for that to be a bit different and for us to do well in that realm this time. 4th and 7th we will definitely take, especially what a race by Novak.
Solid TTT ride by the team to get 5th on the stage and for Keinath to hold on to the podium. He has been great this season. This is also Bardet's first points of the season, so a small win for him too. We also picked up minor stage and classification points and all of it helps.
Congrats on the win adian and thanks for the great reports Gustav
Last year, Pinot lost the jersey on the final stage! Happy to see the tables turn.
Great report Gustav and what a great race! It's been a great duel with Ranaweera/sammyt93, but very relieved to have won our goal race. Stage 6 really wasn't a good day out for Pinot.
I think my TTers were a bit tired after a tough previous stage whereas Carrefour is a bit more rounded - congrats!
Well, slightly improving our TTT squad compared to last year seemed to be counterproductive, as we're doing worse than last season... Funnily, our best result this year comes from a C1 race (Romandie)... Finishing 11th while being 7th in the preview is surely within the expected range, but I'm still waiting for the day we finally exceed expectations the other way round.
Our highlight in this race was definitely winning the green jersey - which at the same time was our main goal. If I'm not wrong, Reinhardt got 49 points here, while we scored a measly 18 points from GC/U25. Which is clearly underwhelming, as we expected a Top 10 from Saggiorato or Manfredi. But not having Masnada to help them this year seems to have a much bigger impact than anticipated...
Hence, it's one more race where we (just) failed to deliver the target 10 PpRD, so we really have to step up again if we want to hold onto that promotion spot! Fortunately, not many mountains and TTs are still coming up - but one TT and TTT each in the next three races doesn't sound very promising right now...
Congrats to P:A for yet another Pinot win, and kudos to Sauber as well for making it a more tense than expected race! And obviously thanks to Gustav for the nice reports!
