PT is the only division where races are more or less raced according to the calendar - and therefore ranking updates can be posted pretty regularly. 3 weeks after the previous one, here are the news from August!
Period Ranking: August
One might argue that with just 5 races, it's not worth posting an update - but while the month of August indeed doesn't have too many races in store for PT teams, we still saw some interesting races.
And without much surprise, the highest scoring one of the month was directly the first one - Deutschland Tour, the sole stage race in this batch. Würtz completed the GC three-peat thanks to winning the decisive stage 3 ITT - but Greig's 279 points were only the 2nd highest score. Polar took 2nd, 7th and 11th with Viennet, Mullen and Krul, and left Germany with 349 points in the bag - 70 more than Grieg! It actually was a Scandinavian festival, with Aker being the 3rd highest scoring team, netting 225 points mainly thanks to Lammertink's 3rd place GC finish.
The first classic of the month then was San Sebastian, which saw a rare 1-2 - oldies Ponzi and Sagan made this a fantastic race for Moser, scoring 300 points! Which is the 3rd highest value achieved by a (PT) team this month. Lutsenko and Malecki (3rd and 7th) got 169 points for Gazelle, while surprise of the day Quita plus Gidich scored 121 points for King Power.
Back to a more TT-heavy race - the traditional Chrono des Herbiers. Würtz confirmed his great form, beating the unbeatable Phinney, making Grieg leave with 240 points in the bag. Los Pollos came just 7 points short of that score, however, with Zmorka, Sütterlin and Keizer all finishing in the Top 11 (3rd, 8th, 11th)! And no, the ITT World Champion's team wasn't even third best, as that spot belongs to Vesuvio, thanks to a strong depth result by Wirtgen, Tanfield and Hepburn (4th, 10th, 13th).
TTers and puncheurs already had their races - now let's move over to the sprinters. We had (too) many late attackers winning flat classics this year - and they once again disturbed the Sprint Royale in Riga - but at least the sprinters took the podium spots in Latvia. Coquard Got a big win for ELCO, with the Greeks bagging 174 points. 131 points went to runner-up Gaviria's Isostar, with Grosu's Huskies getting rewarded with 114 points for the Romanian's 3rd place finish.
So, what's left? The climbers, of course - but no, nothing for them in August. Instead, the cobblers got their playground in Great Britain, in the East Midlands Cicle Classic. Kasperkiewicz powered to the win, and with King Power bringing 7 riders inside the Top 50, the Thai outfit scored 307 points - the month's 2nd highest value. Grieg Maersk once again did well, this time with the other Mads; Pedersen finished 2nd, and with some good depth points the Norwegians scored 226 points. Aker took 3rd place with 164 points, despite Wisniowski only finishing 5th.
That's all for this month. No team participated in more than 4 out of the 5 races - and the August Top 7 teams all raced in Germany. You read a lot about Grieg - and rightfully so, as they pretty much dominated this month, scoring 763 points!
King Power also did very well, with 637 points being a nice reward for this month. Polare are another 70 points down in 3rd place, with ELCO being the final team above 500 points this month. Isostar in 8th place are the highest ranked of those who didn't go to Deutschland, and their 417 points (over 50 PpRD, nota bene) see them in the upper midfield.
On the other side of the table, ISA only did the two mandatory races, resulting in pretty mediocre 66 points De Stijl, Zwift and Evonik also ended up with less than 100 points, while Aegon - the only other team with just 2 races - at least crossed that barrier.
Here are the full numbers for the month of August:
Deu
Seb
Herb
Riga
Mid
Total
1
Grieg-Maersk
279
0
240
18
226
763
2
King Power
163
121
46
0
307
637
3
Polar
349
2
79
0
131
561
4
ELCO - ABEA
205
0
112
174
35
526
5
Tinkoff - La Datcha Team
188
0
120
64
109
481
6
Aker - MOT
225
0
39
44
164
472
7
EA Vesuvio
195
26
196
0
40
457
8
Isostar - Specialized
0
32
176
131
78
417
9
Los Pollos Hermanos
112
10
233
0
60
415
10
Moser - Sygic
0
300
49
0
51
400
11
Duolingo
151
47
44
0
73
315
12
cycleYorkshire
87
18
59
0
148
312
13
Team Puma - SAP
54
0
115
95
20
284
14
Gazelle
0
169
20
37
46
272
15
Huski Chocolate
0
0
42
114
93
249
16
Team UBS
0
52
41
2
102
197
17
MOL Cycling Team
0
0
20
4
154
178
18
Aegon - Peroni
0
0
20
0
106
126
19
Evonik - ELKO
0
0
20
2
71
93
20
Zwift Pro Cycling
0
20
20
11
40
91
21
De Stijl Cycling
0
0
31
8
44
83
22
ISA - Hexacta
0
0
20
0
46
66
Full Ranking
It was a month without much activity on top of the rankings - as our Top 5 are identical to last month's. However, Puma have now drawn level with Isostar - in terms of race days used. But while the former saw a drop in their PpRD, the latter improved it again - which just means that the gap between 1st and 2nd has grown bigger again! The Slovenians are now more than 500 points clear of the Germans, and look very well on track for the three-peat!
However, it's not a given yet that these two teams will actually take the first two spots! While the win looks to be out of reach, King Power have reduced their 500 points deficit to Puma to just 150 points - and the projections even see them finish ahead of the Germans! We seem to be in for a thrilling fight for 2nd - or could it be even more? A 700 points gap to Isostar looks huge - but can a title charge be fully ruled out? We'll see...
As RDs used are getting closer between the least and most racing teams, the rankings are already very similar to the PpRD values. Which means that Aker and Tinkoff currently are looking pretty good to finish inside the Top 5 - and they do have an almost 300 points gap to the next teams currently. Who are Polar, Gazelle, ELCO, Grieg, Vesuvio, ISA and MOL.
After the Top 12, there's quite a drop in the PpRD values - and also a 260 points gap, which makes it pretty unlikely that any of the teams below could still challenge for the Top 10. But at least all of De Stijl, cycleYorkshire and Moser currently look pretty safe from relegation danger.
Which holds as well for Evonik considering PpRD - but not that much in terms of actual points. They're just 100 points ahead of the bottom 6 teams - but it's still most likely that only one of those will be safe.
Zwift are still doomed - a 1,800 points gap to safety is just too much, especially with all GTs done. It's not looking too bright for Los Pollos, UBS and Aegon, either, as they're 280 points and more behind 17th place. It's just 30 points to safety for Huski, but Duolingo have raced slightly less so far.
The projection says that Los Pollos and UBS are pretty much doomed, while one out of Duolingo, Huski and Aegon should be safe. Duolingo currently are in the best position - but let's look at the situation again in a month!
We said it before, with a win in Herbiers, Taylor Phinney could have locked up the title. He finished "only" 2nd, though, and so he's still trailing Silvio Herklotz - by a mere 10 points! If my calculations are right, the American should still have one race left to make it 3 in a row!
Nothing happened on the next two spots, with Joseph Dombrowski and Pierre-Henri Lecuisinier having ended their season early. Then, however, we have Mads Pedersen who gained 3 spots with his East Midlands performance - and he's just 121 points behind the final podium spot!
That one could however also be a target for Arnaud Demare, who keeps his 6th place, and is 151 points behind 3rd place. Pavel Sivakov dropped 2 spots and is down in 7th place.
Bryan Coquard is the only rider entering the Top 10, jumping from 15th to 8th with some great racing in Germany and Latvia - outscoring Caleb Ewan by 56 points to be the division's best pure sprinter. The latter also lost two spots, by the way.
Finally, Justo Tenorio rounds out the Top 10, dropping from 9th to 10th. Bernal was the only one losing his Top 10 spot, dropping from 10th to 12th.
Maybe the most notable improvement was Würtz' jump from 98th to 32nd, thanks to his wins in Germany and Herbiers. Kasperkiewicz gained roughly 30 spots, while Ponzi jumped from 105th to 61st.
Tell me what you think about those rankings - here they are:
Absolutely thrilled with this status. Thanks a lot for the work Fabianski! To be 8th at this state is just amazing.
Obviously the top 10 battle is still open, and we don't have a lot of great races left, but the teams just ahead of us have all raced more than us, so maybe we can keep the hook, while not losing too much ground to the teams behind as I do have a cushion on MOL and ISA. Grieg should have a better finish than us with a couple of cobbled races though.
We need Koretzky to perform well to stay inside the top 10 with Coquard almost done, and Chiarello entirely done.
Thanks for the update, this is the time of the year where its hard to get too many of them
Completely missed that Deutschland wasnt part of the last update yet so the update is worse than i thought.
However, Huski is still 32 points behind us post-Paris-Tours and Duolingo a good 100 points behind us with Aegon probably out of reach (at least of us). Usually, that should be enough for us with Lopez arguably being the single rider with the most favourable schedule remaining. But we need to get a larger gap to protect us from freak results like Mosers 1-2.
ToNE could quickly become a key race for the relegation fight with most teams in the area having a good option with chances to overperform or underperform a lot there.
We are ahead of Duolingo after Paris-Tours, but man this is going to be a really tight one. Like knockout said, it might come down to under/over performing in ToNE and Gerts doesn't have a good record in that one.
Hopefully we can score just enough in the other races left to be safe even with a bad ToNE. Grosu will be in Moscow, Gerts in Battenkill and Japan, Formolo in Il Lombardia.
We got a little bit closer to safety positions in the ranking after the last update, but still too far away to realistically stay in PT. Would be nice if we could still overtake UBS. Thanks for the update, Fab!
Great to see us still inside the top 5, even with a tiny, tiny gap down to 6th. It’s still very close all the way down to 12th, meaning we have to chase points in all our races to keep it up.
The update looks good for us, let's bring it over the line boys! Also the struggle is intense at the bottom, but my money is on both Evonik and Aegon to pull themselves out of the mud at the very end. We could be in for an intense Lombardia.
Deutschland
Rolling the dice with Wirtgen here, only the one TT stage available to achieve a good result. Flat otherwise, so Van der Lijke can try and achieve something.
A pair of 5th places opening up. Well it’s better than average really. Nice to see a final bid for something through a Pelikan launch on Stage 5, although fading to 6th.
TT: 8th for Wirtgen, 11th for Tanfield. Not to be this year then. Two in the Top 10 final GC is good for sure, just not the right end of it!
San Sebastian
Rucigaj defies a puncture to make it to the front group, albeit finishing 27th and last. 15th at least comes in as one of Valter’s better outings this season.
Herbiers
Well the first leg certainly went well. Wirtgen firing in to 3rd; with Tanfield 9th and Hepburn 12th. 3rd feels like best case scenario for the race, and there’s already an advantage on 4th+ then here!
10th, 14th and 19th not as good in the Leg 2. But fortunately the GC looks a lot more like the first leg! 4th, 10th and 13th, that’s a good race.
59th for Rutsch in East Midlands.
Back in the Top 10! Can't imagine it will last given the races left to come, but comfortable mid table is all we ever wanted.
