The main update clearly comes from the Vuelta a Espana and LBL while a lot of PTHC took place for the PT teams.
With 2 GTs in, one team without a real GT contender still is in first! Might be a new really as Evonik defends the lead with some surprising GT performances by secondary climbers.
Following with just ~150 points is Vuelta winner Festina with the PTs star Lecuisinier right now.
Isostar is a similar case as Evonik, 2 GTs without a proper captain but still in contention for the title in 3rd while Moser in5th is also still strong with ageing Bewley but young Sagan and co.
Most impressive though King Power. From relegation zone, they climbed into the midfield and now into the top4! Lutsenko really the best puncheur this season and the full team on fire with lots of depth points as well.
Gazelle drops down a bit to 6th while one of the most successfull teams of all time in 8th with EA Vesuvio.
eBuddy and Aker usual top10 contenders.
At the botton Indosat and cycleYorkshire now with a proper gap and likely going down again.
UBS, Rakuten still not too far off while Aegon as 5th last still with a bit better chances as the gap is just 58 points and they got less race days as well as the next two teams, something that also the other two relegation teams are in advantage of.
Volvo, Air France are the two teams just ahead and in high danger as well while Grieg, Generali, ISA and surprisingly Puma (yeah, Herklotz saving them anyway) not too far off. Tinkoff looking good now but Kritskiy got his two GT podiums so far and now the rest of the team must deliver I guess to defend the midfield position.
- De Bie might have 700 points. But this is just good enough for 6th to 9th best puncheur with quite a gap to some while being the best on paper...really missing those 200-400 points there to leave the relegation zone.
- Why didn`t I send Olivier to either Giro or Vuelta. Instead of a potential top5, he might now not even top10 or 15 the Tour seeing the differences in the startlists this year.
- Had expected a lot more from Valls and Velits. Both have had their two GTs but stay at 223 and 100 points only in total with other races included already. Neither having breakaway luck in the GTs and neither going for the KoM is kind of disappointed.
- The performances of van der Poel, Toupalik and Ballerini at least kind of fill the gaps, those 3 underperformers are lacking.
- Groenewegen very consistent. Not as strong as last year, but according to his stats in many races I guess.
- Unfortunately had not a lot of depth points despite having De Bie as favourite in the hills. Vliegen came closest still but Carboni, Zardini, Stuyven, Boom or Ciccone all with mainly minimum points most of the time, which is another reason why I am that far below. Had hoped De Bie would pull 3-4 riders towards top30 positions very regularly, instead he is isolated too quick for some reason, which might be positioning I guess.
- Dekker/Machado at 12 points each...time to say goodbye MG after two long careers.
Don't like the projected scoring. A weird season for us: Bobridge bounces back from a disastrously bad season and does surprisingly well. Haig and Howard are somewhat coming around with solid to good performances, but the scoring is low key thanks to less breakaway success and backup GC results in the GTs. Can't really be disappointed thanks to our landing Top-5 or Top-10 results on a regular base, but it appears that we will miss the PT Top-10 once again (and clearly). If Morton disappoints in the Tour and David keeps doing nothing, we may rather focus on avoiding to slip down towards a relegation battle?!
Imagine how good Malecki will be when he maxes out
Surprising to see that if we had scored what was expected at the Vuelta, we probably wouldn't be in the relegation spots atm. Hadn't realized King Power was doing so well, great to see.
Gonna need a miracle from Quintana at the Tour, but honestly, Im sure teams who's best rider is a 78 MO rider will score 3x the amount as my team again.
We're doing very well so far which ist nice. I fear that it will be difficult to hold on to a podium spot, especially as Mohoric underperforms. We still have a chance though, and now we have to aim for that spot. The title now will be between Gazelle (Madrazo at Le Tour I assume), Festina, Evonik and Puma/Moser as wildcards. This way 4-6 is the most realistic finish for us I guess.
Great to see Lecuisinier leading the rankings and beating the 2000 points mark. Despite him being a GT potential winner I didn't expect him to get that high. I had him at 1600, and with a bufferzone to put him into a region of aproximately 1800 points. So that's really nice. But also to see Koretzky and Coquard inside top 20 is a bit overwhelming. Coquard should be there, but Koretzky shouldn't. I expect neither will finish there with the Tour still to go for a lot of GC riders, but it is very nice to see.
That said, my depth isn't working at all due to us never going into breakaways. No other riders even close to top 100 and just 3 riders in the top 200 isn't good at all. I know we have a lot of unmaxed talents, but we definately doesn't get any value for money from Bongiorno, van Niekerk, Nizzolo, Zoidl etc. Boily is still too early to call though.
Overall we are sitting in 2nd, which is very cool. I had hoped to dethrone Evonik for just a brief period, but we won't ever be within touching ground again, so I'll just enjoy that we actually was very close halfway through the season. From here and forward we will have to do whatever we can to fight off those coming from behind - and we will surely be overtaken by atleast Isostar and Moser, but I also fear Gazelle and Puma will come back strong after the Tour.
We have a very high projected ranking, but we have a LOT of bad racedays to come. The next month is awful really, and quite a lot of our PTHC racedays isn't very good either. TONE is a zeropointer (give or take) and we don't have the Tasmania/Lombardia output that we have sometimes had. So no supersprint, but a dieselengine performance to hopefully survive the top 5 battle.
I'm very surprised to see King Power in 4th, and equally surprised to see Air France and Generali quite far back.
Grieg continue to stay afloat, which I didn't see coming. Tinkoff in 11th not far above the relegation zone must be a little bit concerning after having two GT podiums, that couldn't have been expected pre season. Not a lot (if any) racedays left for Kritskiy. Could they end up in the tiptoe area once again?
Not a great month (as expected), but still above the drop zone. The TdF will probably take us further down, but after that our schedule looks quite good I would say with races like Herbiers, Deutschland, ToNE, Midlands and Rheden. Still liking our chances, but it will be a tough fight!
Still at the top of the ranking after two GTs is fantastic. By far the best situation we have ever been in but its still very close and the fact that we only lead the ranking because Riga was added to this update already is testament to it.
Festina is super close but with Lecuisinier done and Coquard also having raced quite a bit, the remaining schedule should suit me quite a bit more (even when they still have 8 more RDs in hand) so I'd hope to see that gap extend over time.
Isostar in 3rd could come very close in the next couple of races as Phinney still has not raced too much so i think they might contest us as well.
Gazelle is another big danger. If their Tour can match or surpass Festinas Vuelta then they can cut down that gap very quickly and combined with their usual great depth in stage races the current gap can possibly be vaporized within the next two months.
Puma is another 400 points behind Gazelle and even when they have Herklotz at the tour for another possibly huge scoring, i am confident that our current gap is large enough to stick.
Not sure if i should be worried by Moser. They have obviously some potential huge races left like ToNE but ideally, most other big scorings should be able to be somewhat matched by my team.
In terms of the rest of the rankings, Generali easily the biggest surprise. I had them down as a top 3-5 candidate but i would have never expected them to be even drawn close to the relegation fight. Hugely surprising to me. The other big surprise is King Power who continue to score everywhere and lead by an incredible Lutsenko find themselves far ahead of the relegation fight.
And of course i'm very much intrigued at the relegation fight. Outside of Indosat and cycleYorkshire, not much has been decided yet and quite a few very interesting teams are still in the fight. Could be a nailbiter with so many teams that can still be drawn into that fight. We'll probably have to wait for the post-Tour update to see who really is endangered.
I was expecting a big leap in the rankings after besides the flat classics, my team did extraordinary well in all races, but getting to 4th and also considering the gaps behind is surprising.
3rd best team at the Giro, despite Reis' failure is a great result. Other than that Lutsenko, Kasperkiewicz and Brändle did very well in their races. I couldn't have complained much if I had scored 1000 points less since the last update (I would have complained though). At this point I feel quite confident, that reaching our top 10 rankings goal is very much possible.
The relegation fight seems much closer than it had in the last update. Will be some interesting races coming up.
That was a bad month for us. We can't deny that, with the Vuelta providing very, very few points, but also due to Kwiatkowski not performing as expected in the Ardennes classics. All that makes me worried, as I expect us to continue to score little and few points well beyond the Tour, which in all likelyhood sees us right down there in the fight to avoid relegation when the post-Tour racing starts.
The title fight is on 
