Inflation is pretty much everywhere in the world - and ranking updates currently are no exception to that! Let's take a look at how PCT teams did in August:
Period Ranking: August
As always, PCT is the division having most races on the schedule - there were 8 in August, whereof 4 teams did 6, while HelloFresh were having a relaxing month with just 2 races.
However, that was enough for the latter to get this month's highscore in Benelux, picking up 322 points! A stage win by Rowe plus four riders in the Top 15 - Riesebeek (4th), Rowe (7th), Daniel (14th), GvK (15th) was a pretty strong result, to say the least.
Bewley may not have won a stage, but taking 2nd in the GC alongside some strong stage results (and McCarthy in 12th) brought Amaysim 284 more points on their way to the title. GC winner Küng's Crabpack - who also won stage 1 - scored 276 valuable points in their attempt to reach safety.
Deutschland Tour had some high scoring potential, given its PTHC status - but those big points mainly went to PT. Assa Abloy came out on top of the PCT teams, scoring 118 points thanks to Gonzalez Salas' 5th place GC finish. With 91 and 89 points respectively, Zara and Minions were 2nd and 3rd, both mainly due to their sprinters (Jakobsen and Vesely) doing rather well.
Onto the first out of just three classics this month - San Sebastian. And while not getting a Top 5, Cedevita delivered a massive team result, taking 6th, 9th and 12th with Beltran, Ardila and Gaudu - making them the best PCT team (and 3rd overall) with 144 points! Led by Eiking in 5th place, Gjensidige scored 92 points - while the other teams all just picked up the remainders. Popo4Ever were the best of them, scoring 28 points.
Danmark then saw PCT's sole Danish team Carlsberg deliver a strong race, taking two stage wins with AKA and Belevics, alongside the (shared) points jersey win for the former. With three riders in the Top 20 (Belevics, Kämna, Eg), they scored a total of 229 points. However, there was obviously no way past the high flyers from Zara - who didn't win a stage, but the GC with Cosnefroy, while Thomas took 6th. 289 points for the Spaniards! The race for 3rd best was much closer, with Minions having the edge scoring 180 points, thanks to good GC results by Dennis and Brown (4th and 10th).
From the 2nd highest score this month, we go to the lowest one - as expected, Trentino didn't yield lots of points for the PCT teams. However, Binance with 48 and Voyagin with 45 points both did a good job, the former taking a 4th place GC finish with Antunes, the latter getting a stage win, the white jersey, and a shared win in the points standings with Lyu. We then have to go way down to reach Project: Africa, 3rd best scoring team on just 5 points scored by Main and Kireva.
Frankfurt Eschborn was better news for PCT - even though the win went to CT. Binance got 64 points with Kennett's 2nd place, Katrasnik-led Cedevita took 61 thanks to the rouleur's 4th place, while Popo4Ever (3rd place from Varga) and Minions (5th and 10th from Stuyven and Quintana) scored 52 points each.
Another flat classic was raced in Latvia - and like many races this year that were basically designed for sprinters, Katrasnik was the party pooper for most of them, getting 4th place and the best result for PCT. 101 points were Cedevita's reward. Lierse successfully played the more classic card of sending a sprinter, with Bonifazio taking 6th place and 70 points. And Indosat's Howard for once kind of showed up, taking 8th place, with the team bagging 57 points.
Finally, the Tour of Britain has just ended - with Dennis winning the GC only fractions ahead of Dunbar! Alongside the opening stage win by Hodeg and a couple more Top 10 finishes, Minions continue their good streak with 163 points.
Despite another underperformance by Beltran, Cedevita end up 2nd - a stage win by Roman and two GC Top 10s (Pavlic 6th, Beltran 9th) are worth 143 points. 3rd place goes to Trans thanks to some great stage results - including winning the last stage - plus the points jersey by Korosec, and 3 riders in the GC Top 15 (Cuming 10th, Waeytens 13th, Korosec 15th). This results in 131 points for the Slovenians. By the way, Indosat again narrowly miss out, just 3 points short of the podium...
So, what's the summary of all this? A bit surprisingly, Carlsberg top the month with 594 points! Not the strongest team in any race, but decent in most of their 6 participations, they actually have an 80 points advantage over the Minions. The men in overalls raced 5 times this month and clearly keep up their promotion push.
The same can be said about Cedevita. Despite not participating in Germany, they score just above 500 points and clearly are on a high lately. Which is a feeling that even holds for most of the season for Amaysim, who once again are among the best despite racing just 4 times. With 474 points, they're showing no signs of weakness.
It's then another 50 points jump down to the next team - and Crabbe are also showing some strong signs of life, netting 422 points in 4 races! Is there still hope?
"Hope" would be quite an understatement for Zara, whose promotion should be sealed. Even though they just had 3 races, they're still in 6th place this month, socring 393 points. We then have a group of 4 teams separated by just 24 points - Gjensidige, Indosat, Assa Abloy and HelloFresh, (yeah, the guys with 2 races), ranging from 355 to 331 points, before getting an almost 100 points drop to 11th placed Binance.
At the bottom of the table, things are starting to look desperate for Volcanica, getting only 16 points in August! Strava aren't much better off, though, bagging 57 points, being the only other team below 100 points.
For Popo4Ever, the month surely went worse than expected as well, with the Ukranians getting only 114 points. We then have a group of 4 teams within just 10 points from each other, with Kraftwerk, Project: Africa, Voyagin and Xero scoring between 144 and 154 points - which is 50 points less than the next teams.
You want to see those numbers? Here we go:
Bene
Deu
Seb
DK
Tren
Fra
GB
Riga
Total
1
Carlsberg - Danske Bank
160
87
0
229
1
0
105
12
594
2
Minions - Subwoolfer
29
89
0
180
0
52
163
0
513
3
Cedevita
24
0
144
30
0
61
143
101
503
4
Amaysim Cervelo
284
0
2
161
0
0
0
27
474
5
Crabbe-CC Chevigny
276
58
0
61
0
0
0
27
422
6
Zara - Irizar
0
91
13
289
0
0
0
0
393
7
Gjensidige Pro Cycling Team
50
0
92
122
0
0
91
0
355
8
Indosat Ooredoo
0
31
0
107
0
22
128
57
345
9
Assa Abloy
0
118
0
165
0
0
57
0
340
10
HelloFresh - Lampre
322
0
0
0
0
9
0
0
331
11
Binance
0
0
25
2
48
64
99
11
249
12
Trans Looney Tunes
39
44
0
0
0
0
131
32
246
13
Bralirwa - Stevens
76
67
0
18
0
0
30
40
231
14
Red Bull Zalgiris
21
34
2
141
0
24
0
0
222
15
Philips - Force India
126
0
0
76
3
0
0
0
205
16
Lierse SK - Pizza Ullo PCTeam
8
0
0
126
0
0
0
70
204
17
Sauber Petronas Racing
103
0
8
93
0
0
0
0
204
18
Xero Racing
59
0
0
0
0
43
0
52
154
19
Voyagin - Bird
0
0
22
80
45
0
0
0
147
20
Project: Africa
140
0
0
0
5
0
0
0
145
21
Kraftwerk Man Machine
90
21
0
33
0
0
0
0
144
22
Team Popo4Ever
0
0
28
34
0
52
0
0
114
23
Strava
0
2
0
36
0
0
19
0
57
24
Volcanica - Fox
0
0
0
9
0
7
0
0
16
Full Ranking
No changes on the first 3 positions - and these teams are definitely looking more and more likely to actually go up! That's not even a question anymore for Amaysim, whose 3,500 points are more than 1,000 above non-promotion - and they've used up less race days than their first chasers.
The latter being Zara and Minions. The Spaniards are almost 400 points back, with the Bermudians another 150 points down. Both have used up about 20 RDs more than the Aussies, leaving them with less than 20 race days for the rest of the year.
Carlsberg had a pretty good month and moved up from 7th to 4th - 400 points behind the podium, but a bit more than 100 points ahead of the next competitors.
There are actually three of them, separated by just 26 points. We're talking about Binance, Cedevita and Bralirwa. The latter dropped out of the promotion area, falling from 5th to 7th - while the Slovenians jumped up from 9th to 6th. They're currently just 2 points behind a direct promotion spot - and have used up roughly 20 RDs less than the two teams surrounding them! Projections actually even see Cedevita end up on the podium - which would be massive given Beltran's truly disappointing season!
And we should get a really tense fight for those promotion spots, as both Lierse and HelloFresh - despite trailing the previously mentioned trio by 100-odd points, are projected to still be in that race! Projections actually have Amaysim, Zara, Cedevita and Minions rather comfortably on the first four spots - but for the final Top 5 spot the numbers currently predict a 64 points difference between Lierse, HelloFresh and Carlsberg! Binance currently look to have just an outside shot - but a lot can change with one really big race!
Even more can change with a strong run of results, as shown by Minions - and maybe even more by Assa Abloy! Two months ago, they were dead last - now they're sitting rather comfortably in 17th place with plenty of races still to come!
And Crabbe, who were last by the end of July, have at least gained two spots - but are still not looking good to stay safe. Last place now belongs to Project: Africa, who are 70 points behind Strava. Both teams are looking more and more likely to relegate, having not as many races left as some of their main rivals - and a PpRD of below 10.
As said before, Crabbe in 22nd place aren't looking great, either - nor do Volcanica one spot higher. The Latinos have dropped 5 spots in what was an abysmal month for them. Their gap to safety doesn't look huge yet, as they're just roughly 100 points behind 19th place, but RD usage isn't in their favor.
Gjensidige, on the other hand, has still plenty of opportunities to move up, and despite them being on the final relegation spot now, projections see them rather easily stay up. Which is also due to some really small gaps in this region of the rankings, with only 100 points between 20th and 16th.
The latter spot belongs to Trans, who - according to projections - could be the final team to relegate. However, Voyagin aren't much better off - with both having raced a lot already, they also have to hope for their rivals to not shoot up the rankings.
The other teams currently in the danger zone are Philips, Xero and Assa Abloy, but all of them have 20 or more RDs more to race - pretty much synonym to "Tour of America".
The latter definitely has the potential to shake up the rankings by the end of September - but for now, let's look at and discuss the current rankings:
Well, despite the feeling that every other flat classic is won by a late attacker, PCT seems to be a very sprinter friendly division - with four (and a half) of the kind inside the Top 10!
Jonas Ahlstrand still tops the list with 941 points, which is 127 more than Sam Oomen (who according to anonymous sources is done racing for this year). Kristoffer Halvorsen has almost closed the gap to 2nd and just trails by 4 points!
We also saw Fabio Jakobsen gain 3 spots, being 95 points behind the podium, but making it three sprinters in the Top 4! With Eddie Dunbar, we then have a rather "uncategorized" rider in 5th place - although he most likely belongs into the stage racer drawer.
Angel Madrazo lost two spots, as did Jack Haig and Mattia Cattaneo - it was not a month for the "typical" stage racers for sure. Joeri Stallaert was able to hold onto his 9th place (he's the "half" sprinter, by the way), with teammate Fabio Silvestre being the second new name inside the Top 10.
The latter, however, is just 5 points ahead of Bewley, who gained 11 spots. Dennis in 13th even moved up 18 places, while Areruya in between them lost 4 spots, dropping out of the Top 10. The same holds for Padun, who's down in 14th.
We can also spot some impressive gains by Küng (74th to 25th) and Cosnefroy (66th to 30th).
I'll let you find out how your (other) riders did - here are the full rankings:
Used up lots of race days in August. Benelux and Danmark were duds, but the other races were all very good. Should be fun to see where we end up. In theory we should have a least of few more good races left, although ToA likely not one of them
Still mostly doing it with a wide breadth of depth scoring, since our top rider accounts for only 18.6% of all the points. Beltran to make it in the top 50 by the end?
Thanks for the quick, but still very detailed update Fabianski
The team just manages to score in every race, even places where it isn't expected at all (Frankfurt, Benelux). Add the standout performances from Cattaneo and Dennis and the consistency of Vesely and we not only have third place in the teams rankings but now three riders in the top 21.
Don't think we'll be able to move further up as all remaining races have a low scoring potential except Bayern Rundfahrt. We might well fall outside the top five come October, but I'm already proud of what the team has accomplished this season.
Thanks for the swift update Fabianski. Holding my congratulations for tsmoha for now but some weird stuff has to happen to throw that lead away. Wishing all the other teams the best of luck in their promotion/relegation/position battle.
Down to 9th in PpRD is rough Looks like next season is going to be a rebuild rather than PT, unless Madrazo pulls off some miracle in Morocco. I guess having 3 riders account for 82% of your points isn't sustainable after all
Could this be the first time a rider wins the individual standings only to be relegated still in PCT? Rough scenes for DW who I think did move quite well in the transfer window but PCT is a rough mistress. Quintana and Chaves underscoring, heavily obviously doesn't help his cause sadly.
As I said in update 5 I am pretty optimistic at us swinging for the fences on this one. We're not a ToA team which means there are teams around us with a lot of HC race days points wise in C1 fields and that can obviously change a lot. Especially a team like Kraftwerk who are known to be ToA merchants(meant with love) could eventually put us under threat. Us not being at ToA also means that we have a lot of seperate races where we can accumulate points in terms of GCs and classics which could be a big advantage for us, but it is hard to tell because it is the first time I have planned my calendar with this many races in the final two months of the season.
Also an early congratulations to the top 3 who seem to be headed to the PT already. It was obvious at the start of the season that Amaysim basically already had a PT squad and that they'd run rampant across the division also super happy to see LLS getting rewarded for his approach, hopefully we can have an upswing towards the end of the season.
Balkans at least to be semi decent for us so far, although it is way too early to call anything there. Kennaugh has two races left and neither really suits him too well in Rheden and Lugano but our teams in both should be able to bring something home regardless of his position.
Daniel has one shot left at a good result in Battenkill, which is a win goal for us but ultimately it is not a parcours that suits him well and we're looking at depth scoring in that one.
Rowe is on double team duty in a lot of races to end the season sop will be tough for him to up his tally more I think, but we still have a couple of races for Elissonde who is due a high ceiling performance this year, hopefully he does that in Maroc. Our calendar really hasn't suited him well this year and sadly it reflects in his points total.
If Meurisse finds his form from earlier this year we can for sure start pushing up he has 4 races left to close out the season with three of them being races where he'd expect to score solid points.
We also still have our last C2 outing in TOME so maybe we get like 20 points there but you never know.
Also going to be super intersting to see where our good friends at Xero end the season, they're in like every race to end the season with those RDs spent.
Halvorsen is done for the year, can only hope he can stay in the top 5. We got 6 C2 RDs left, but Reis also has a couple of stage races to attend. Keeping top 10 will be tough but hope for the best
I knew we had a pretty solid month, but I definitely didn't expect that kind of increase in ranking, or to lead the standings. It was the areas where we picked up unexpected points after losing some from our top guys which helped us out the most - most notably, Belevics sneaking into the Denmark top 10. AKA actually sprinting a bit in stage races was nice too, and Kamna's gonna casually put up 400 points this year. Was not expecting this riding style from him - underwhelming TT's and then daring solo's on the hills to turn it around. But he's been a lot of fun to watch for sure. Feels nice after rejecting so many offers for him in the offseason.
So, we're in 4th, but still 7th on PpRD. I'm always going to take points in hand over points in the bush, but it's still not a comforting thought that we don't have much left. We used up a ton of race days in August - and with success - but now we have to count on the teams below us underperforming to the end, which is tough. A lot of things will depend on the Tour of America. That can be either a great coup if you're Kraftwerk, or a big race day sink if you're most other teams. I'll unfortunately be rooting against a few.
For us, most of our top guys are just about done. Trentin has Battenkill, Guldhammer and AKA have Maroc. Kamna has Bayern. Other than that, the fall classics season will be all KHJ and Aranburu. They've been our main underperformers this year, although some of that has been my own planning (Kamna often taking precedence in stage races with a TT). I'd like to think we're in a decent spot there just because we can send one of them to all the classics, even where there are clashes. But unless they actually come through, we'll be sinking back down the rankings. Time for Aranburu to prove why he got all that training money, once and for all.
Thanks for another great update Fabianski!
RIP Exxon Duke, David Veilleux, Double Feature, and Monster Energy
Another great little period for us with Post Danmark Rundt. Cosnefroy & Thomas flying up the rankings as a result!
Jakobsen climbing up to 4th in the Individual Rankings but he's all done for the season so it's unlikely he'll stay in that Top 5.
With the 6 stage Tour du Maroc with Mas as leader and 5 C2 RDs in Herald Sun Tour, I'm expecting that we may be in with a fight to hold onto 2nd as our PPRD will drop but here's hoping we can pick up some points there.
Final race we need some good scoring is Bayern Rundfahrt. Hopefully Taaramae can have a strong end to the season
RD aside, my god! We’re nearly in the top-10 after being relegation fodder all season. I know it obviously won’t last, and means sweet FA until after ToA has been raced to have an accurate picture of where things are, but at least we are being competitive. Hopefully Kraftwerk can eat all of the points in ToA again and we won’t fall down too many spots.
It scares me how many teams are looking to BR for good scoring, because we are too. Dunbar pulled of the heist of the century to pull us to safety last year, but with (most likely) Haig, Cattaneo, Conci, Kamna and Dennis there it will be a hard task to repeat. We desperately need a podium there to fell any kind of safety.
I am pretty unsure of how this will turn out, it is so congested down the bottom now. Still very scared
As said most recently, ToA will be more of a fun/gamble race for us, so we probably won't keep our points per race day that high. Anyway, obviously we're pretty much on pace for a relaxed promotion campaign, since we still have a few promising races to come, I guess.
No matter what team combination and calendar I select, it never seems to work out. Lack of depth scoring is what is killing us I guess. Big finish to the season left for Benoot and especially Choi having ToA. Penasa also in Bayern and Maroc, but he's more of a steady eddy than a top contender. How far up can we really go? Really believed we had set ourselves up to be a top half PCT team this season but doesn't look like it.
Looks like next season is going to be a rebuild rather than PT, unless Madrazo pulls off some miracle in Morocco. I guess having 3 riders account for 82% of your points isn't sustainable after all 
