Taken from the career guide:
-- Mountains: Make sure you protect your rider (see above). At some point on the 2nd-to-last or last mountain the favorites will attack. Do not follow them unless you have the green bar flashing, but even then, be careful -- in general do not attack on mountains because you will lose energy too quickly; you can lose 2 bars of red in an instant. This will cripple you later. Instead, 15-20kmkm from the top set free effort to a level that puts your heart rate somewhere between 166 and 173. As you climb, watch your red levels -- in a mountain-top finish you can afford to have your bar nearly fill up, whereas if there is a downhill (and especially if there is flat after the downhill) you should keep one or two red bars free for your final effort. Basically, you want to climb as quickly as you can without cracking and while saving energy for the finishing straight/downhill/sprint. You will catch most other riders, sometimes all of them, without attacking.
The AI has a tendency to have the leaders attack on the second-to-last climb. Knowing this, you need to consider whether you will follow that attack, pre-empt it by riding away under free effort, or catch the riders later by chasing them down. What you do should depend on your assessment of the relative strength of the field against which you're racing, and on your personal prefrences--all strategies can win. But if for example Cunego has been very strong letting him get away on the next-to-last climb means quite simply that you won't catch him. You're better off trying to get away slowly via free effort and making him work to catch you. On the other hand, if the other GC contenders have shown weakness then you should attack (either via the attack button or free effort) early -- I've even done so on the third-to-last climb -- in order to put them in difficulty.
Even if you are losing, do not put so much effort that you crack completely (fill up all 4 red bars). Save your effort for another day, for the TT, etc.
-- In both hills and mountains, if your heart rate is above 166 the effort you make chews up your blue bar before really starting to create red. That means that on a downhill before a final climb, if you have extra food you should eat it so that you will have more blue at the bottom, allowing you to climb faster.
-- Downhills. Attacking is the fastest way to go downhill but it risks increasing your heartrate above 166. Any slope below 2.5 percent allows you to do 99 percent effort with heartrate below 166. Make sure to use this knowledge if you get over a mountain first, but don't attack unless you're trying to catch someone.
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