It's 9 races for CT in March - we'll do a classics/stage races split this time:
Partial March Ranking | Classics
C2 racing resumed on day 1 of the month, with another Belgian cobbled classic on the menu: Geraardsbergen - Bosberg. Clear-cut top favourite Gaday didn't leave the others the least chance and won the race, alongside 50 points for Strava. Crabbe picked up 36 points, with Chatarunga's 2nd place finish plus another point by Smirnovs. And finally, Podium Ambition indeed land on a race podium - at least in terms of scoring - collecting 33 points with the best depth result: Matthews, Hennis and Richardson finished took 8th through 10th, and Campbill added some more points with 18th place.
6 CT teams then joined the PCT squads on the Isle of Man, for the C1 rated TTT. With only 9 PCT teams present, it was clear that at least one CT team would end up in the Top 10 - we even had two of them. SEE Turtles and Würth ended up 9th and 10th, scoring 20 points each. Bordeaux were able to beat the weakest PCT team as well, finishing 11th and taking 15 points - just like Podium Ambition in 12th place.
HC race Strade Bianche only had room for two CT teams - with both scoring! Fabbro was one of the big surprises in this hilly race, not being a puncheur at all, but still taking a great 8th place and 38 points for Air New Zealand! And it looks like it wasn't the worst race for climbers, with Berhane scoring 7 points for JEWA TIROL.
10 teams went to Norway for the C1 Lillestrom GP - only two came back with points. Lampaert was the surprise of the race, finishing on a great 6th place - and if we talk about surprises, it has to be a Stela-Vita rider. He is, indeed. The other scoring team was Tafjord, getting 5 points for Breen's 18th place.
GP Izola with its C2 rating then was far more points-loaded for CT teams - most of all for Podium Ambition, who won the race with Lagane. Pons' 24th place makes it 51 points for the Caribbeans. Wackermann once again delivered for Bordeaux, taking 2nd place and 35 points - Pacher added one more to their tally. 3rd place is for Simba Cement, thanks to Felline's sprint to 3rd place.
Podium Ambition will be relieved to see that their strategy at least brings them the first place in a partial ranking - the classics one! 99 points scored in Geraardsbergen, IoM TTT and - of course - Izola are worth the top spot.
Stela-Vita once again scored very solid points, 76 in total. We then have four teams within just 9 points from each other - Tafjord get the better of Crabbe, Bordeaux and Strava in the fight for 3rd.
12 points behind Strava, we have what I'd call the "midfield", led by Air New Zealand in 7th place with 38 points, reaching down to 12th placed Saeco at 25 points - in between are the Turtles, JEWA, Würth, Gjensidige and Simba.
Hilcona are just 7 points further down, but you have to make the cut somewhere... Ekoi are close to them, whereas Babymetal and Caja with 6 and 2 points probably aren't overly happy with their classics month. Manada, Adidas and obviously Mercatone Uno didn't score.
For CT teams, C1 races mostly aren't very high-scoring races. Which also holds for the first one of the month, Vuelta al Pais Vasco. Podium Ambition still did a pretty good job, scoring 47 points in total. Most of them were scored by Canty, who finished 9th in GC, and Lagane, sprinting to 2nd place on day 2.
Caja Rural were the 2nd highest scoring team - their highlight clearly was Barbero winning the KoM jersey. He brought home 29 out of the team's 33 total points.
Gjensidige are a tad further down, scoring 30 points - Eiking finishing 16th in GC and Van Moer taking 2nd in the ITT stage were their main contributors. The other 8 CT teams present all scored between 0 and 7 points.
For CT teams, C2 races mostly are the highlights where they don't get bothered much by PCT competition. Hence, it's no surprise that we have the year's 2nd highest score so far in the Tour of the Middle East.
And unsurprisingly, it's Crabbe who hold the two top scores now - 170 in Tachira, and now 137 in TOME. Well, actually it's mostly GC, points and KoM winner Chiarello who scored those points - 136 to be precise. Total domination by the Brazilian. At least Altanzul picked up one point on stage 1, so the rest of the team can say they contributed as well.
But we can definitely say that Bordeaux did a great job as well. Winning the final stage and taking 2nd in GC with Iturria, plus Top 20 results by Rochas and Tatarinov, plus some stage points by Guerao, and 2nd place in teams - these 107 points really are the outcome of a strong team instead of "just" a great leader.
They may have missed out on a Top 5 GC result, but Ekoi still were the 3rd strongest team. Gall's 6th place GC finish - winning the U25 jersey - plus APP ending up 11th, and Teuns taking a stage podium, and the team finishing 3rd in the team standings, are worth 74 points.
Tour of Guadeloupe then again was a C1 race - but if one rider has clearly proven so far that he thrives in higher-level races, then it's Kamberaj. The Albanian had another stunning race, getting even a stage win on the final day and 3rd place in the GC - 97 points for the CT sprinter! With Yzeiraj adding another point, that's a stunning 98 points yield for Stela-Vita, continuing to surprise a lot of folks including myself!
The other teams literally weren't even half as successful - but Air New Zealand at least got pretty close to that "half". KoM winner Skala (CT teams winning KoMs in C1 looks like a pattern) and Zariff with a 13th place GC finish scored 42 points - definitely a strong result for the Kiwis as well.
Team #3 again scored just less than half of these points, with Simba Cement leaving with 20 points in the bag. All of them were scored by Moser, finishing right ahead of Zariff in the GC, meaning in 12th place. Two more teams finished with 19 points, the rest again between 0 and 7.
Only one single spot was available in Tour of South Africa - Saeco got it, and they scored 39 points (6 PCT teams were lower). Vendrame finished 2nd on the final day, whereas Petrucci led the KoM standings after day 1 and finally ended up 3rd. Zordan also added some KoM points.
Crabbe once again underlined their #1 status in mountainous C2 races, and the Middle East dominance was enough to take first in the stage racing ranking. The low scoring in Guadeloupe does their clear win in this partial ranking no harm.
More than 30 points down, we have Bordeaux - who also had a very strong TOME, and a weak C1 stage race (Pais Vasco in their case). We then again had a close fight for 3rd, with Saeco getting the better of Stela-Vita by just 3 points, with the latter narrowly missing out on the 100 points mark.
Behind the Top 4, it's 3 teams within 1 point fighting for the final Top 5 spot - which goes to Ekoi with 79 points, 1 more than both Gjensidige and Simba. Caja, Tafjord and Podium Ambition round off the Top 10 - the latter are just 15 points behind 5th place.
JEWA are 12 points behind the Top 10 and 10 ahead of both Manada and Air New Zealand - these two are in turn 10 points clear of Adidas. Hilcona are the final team above the bottom 5.
At the bottom of the table - besides Mercatone - we have Babymetal with just 2 points, whereas the Turtles, Würth and Strava all won't be happy with a score below 20 points, either.
Do you remember the January and February period rankings? Well, the Top 2 have always been the same - and they're the same again. Which means that Crabbe win the 3rd month in a row! 197 points are the lowest winning total so far, though.
It's still enough to keep Stela-Vita at bay, by 25 points this time - the biggest margin between the Top 2 so far. However, the Albanians spent four less RDs in March, leading to the highest PpRD of the month.
We then have two teams with 163 points each - Bordeaux and Podium Ambition. The latter spent two additional race days, and hence are slightly lower in terms of PpRD - but it's a clear sign of life nonetheless!
There's a bigger gap between 3rd/4th and 5th than between the Top 4, with Tafjord and Saeco fighting for 5th. The former take that spot by one point, 127 vs. 126. The final two teams above 100 points in March are Gjensidige and Simba.
Ekoi and JEWA round off the Top 10, with Air New Zealand narrowly behind. Caja and Strava follow - the latter with the 4th best PpRD of the month - before we have a bigger gap down to the Turtles in 14th place. They lead a group of 4 teams within just 8 points - Würth round off the Top 15, narrowly ahead of Hilcona and Manada.
Adidas scored more than 30 points as well, but that's only good for 3rd to last - with the last spots going to Babymetal and Mercatone.
Well, if the Top 2 are always the same in each monthly ranking, they obviously are the same also in the overall. It's still not a huge lead for Crabbe, though, with Stela-Vita trailing by just 56 points. The latter have raced more so far, so the projected difference is still sizeable - but that can change with just one good or bad race.
JEWA still are on a safe 3rd place, despite a slightly weaker month. They're more than 100 points behind 2nd, but also 62 points ahead of 4th place - where we now find Bordeaux. The French-Basque team moved up from 6th, and have used up less RDs than those ahead of them. They're even projected to end up on the podium - we'll see.
Gjensidige remain in 5th place, the final automatic promotion spot. They have raced less than many competitors, too, and are looking to be on-track for a bounce-back; however, Manada are just 14 points behind, after a pretty horrible month.
Ekoi, Tafjord and Podium Ambition all are above 300 points as well, with the latter having been the (shared) most active team of the division so far. Hence their rather low PpRD, but mind you, TT-heavy races are still to come... And it's just 80 points to 5th place, so everything is still possible for these teams!
Which could be said about Strava as well, who are among the least racing teams with just 34 RDs so far - but still have a 78 points gap to make up for. They're on the final Top 10 spot right now, with Würth, Simba, Saeco and Hilcona between 8 and 30 points behind. Saeco are the 2nd team with 52 RDs used up, by the way.
The final Top 15 team are Caja, who are pretty much in no-man's-land; 30 points behind Hilcona, 30 points ahead of Air New Zealand. The latter are the first bottom-5 team, followed by the Turtles and Adidas - both have at least crossed the 100 points mark already. Despite Mercatone not racing anymore, they're still over 50 points ahead of Babymetal - the Italians would have had quite some potential, had they continued their journey...
April will bring a big race for the cobblers with Faso, plus a sprinters race in the U.S. Both rider types will have a C2 classic as well - but maybe some of them can surprise in C1 or HC races again?
With his 2nd GC win of the year, William Chiarello easily defended the leader's throne, extending his lead even more. After having raced exactly 50% of his allowed quota, he has a points tally of 380. If he can more or less keep up his PpRD, he could even beat Saber's 2022 score!
It's a close race for 2nd - far, far behind the Brazilian. Xhuliano Kamberaj now is his "closest" follower after a huge performance in Guadeloupe, totalling 196 points. Just slightly more than half of Chiarello's points... Sindre Skjostad Lunke follows just 3 points back, after a not very convincing TOME.
Natnael Berhane only raced in Strade Bianche this month, dropping from 2nd to 4th with 169 points. Mikel Iturria, on the other hand, made a sizeable jump from 14th to 5th after the 2nd best score in TOME.
Aurelien Paret-Peintre continues to score everywhere he goes, but he's still lacking the big result. It's still enough for 6th currently, 141 points. 10 points down is Lucas Manuel Gaday, the 2nd newcomer in the Top 10, having moved up from 11th. And with Faso right ahead, he might move up quite a bit further...
With Gabriel Marin and John Degenkolb, we have two more sprinters in the Top 10, which are rounded off by Kristian Haugaard Jensen, dropping from 4th to 10th.
Garby might have made the most impressive jump, from outside the Top 100 to inside the Top 25. But also Lagane (33rd to 13th) and Lampaert (30th to 17th) made some good progress this month.
With cobbles and sprints upcoming, and no C2 mountain race for once, we can probably expect some more reshuffling in the Top 10 by the end of April!
Thanks for the calculations, Fab! Really fun to read in-depth.
Obviously another great month for us. Don't think anyone could predict this top-3 so far Credits to Stela-Vita and JEWA, great build for a first season.
I expect that Gjensidige, Tafjord and Podium Ambition will definitely climb up in the coming months.
For us April will depend on Chatarunga performing in Faso and Lincoln. From other races I don't expect anything.
MG - Lotto - Caloi
[MG] New Manager of the Year - PCM.daily Awards 2022
Congrats Laurens, amazing work so far!
We're a bit concerned that we're still outside promotion spots, but hopefully we can sort that out over the summer.
Thank you very much for the in-depth ranking Fabianski, brilliant reading
A much improved time, although it takes a lot of days for us to accumulate points. Don't see us holding a Top10 for long, and long term I know we've got the ToA which will really tank the PPrD. We're going well in not being the worst returning CT team at least!
Thanks for the great writeup!
How many teams get relegated/promoted again? Just to know if my current ranking should worry me or if we are still on plan haha!
March was a bad month for us, hope it gets better in the next couple months.
Blasing wrote:
Thanks for the great writeup!
How many teams get relegated/promoted again? Just to know if my current ranking should worry me or if we are still on plan haha!
March was a bad month for us, hope it gets better in the next couple months.
Five teams promote automatically, and for every PT or PCT team that disbands and wasn't relegating anyway, there is another promotion spot (usually between one and three per year, though obviously we hope for as few disbands as possible).
Interesting ranking, with some of the expected powerhouses not having found their footing yet. But a long season is still ahead, of course, and Chiarello won't keep outscoring 15 teams on his own Very strong debut from Stela-Vita so far, Saeco doing well, too. Hopefully, some of the teams near the bottom will soon get some successes, too!
Very good month for us once again, despite very low score in our 10 C1 RD.
It should obviously go down in the coming month, with more no-climbs races, and also C1 and HC races (barring some other good results like Emellia last season).
But with already 2/3 of last season's score, without using more RD in the first three month, the top 10 goal looks very good.
Thank you very much once again Fab for the writing, it was a very pleasant read.
“...the secret of the Great Stories is that they have no secrets. The Great Stories are the ones you have heard and want to hear again. The ones you can enter anywhere and inhabit comfortably."
A. Roy
Thanks once again to Fabi for the detailed rankings, always a great way to recap the month!
The Top 2 look pretty solid to me, behind it's gonna be a close fight for the ranks 3 to 7. For us, as long as APP and Teuns keep scoring solid without the big results it's probably going to be a just as solid 8th place in the end, resulting in the long-loved and exciting game of "How many disbands will we get?" (that everyone could do without for several reasons) to determine our next seasons fate.
Really fun to read in-depth.
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