7 races for PT this month - the month all cobblers have been waiting for, with March featuring 4 classics for them in the second half.
But first come three stage races, increasing in length (all of them not really long ones, either). Ronde van Nederland goes first - two flat rated stages, plus a hilly one. And a lot of bonus seconds available.
And despite not getting a stage win, it was a huge, huge race for Amaysim! I almost couldn't believe the points calculations, but they're accurate: 470 points for the Aussies, 3rd highest value in 2023 so far! Groves didn't get a stage win, but a 2nd place and two more Top 10 finishes - enough to take the GC, the points and the U25 jersey! 366 points for him alone - McCarthy with his 13th place GC finish was the 2nd highest scoring rider for the team - and they also finished 3rd in the team standings.
Just like Amaysim, cycleYorkshire didn't get a stage win - but Cullaigh taking a stage podium, 2nd in GC and in points plus Yates ending up 12th in GC (plus Ballerini 25th and Hayter 37th) was a great result nonetheless. It's 398 points for the Brits - still more than any team scored in 8 days of Paris - Nice, for example...
Then we have a 100 points gap to Rabobank as the 3rd best scoring team - 293 points for the Dutch outfit. Grosu finally showed a great sprint on the final (hilly) stage, winning it and taking 3rd in GC, 4th in points. Evenepoel, Gerts and Van der Kooij all got a GC result around 30th place, with the former finishing on the U25 podium as well.
Then there was the TTers' party in Czechia, won by Würtz thanks to a convincing stage 3 victory. Korsaeth got a Top 25, whereas Hulgaard won the U25 jersey (and finished inside the Top 50 alongside two more teammates), which resulted in a good haul of 453 points for Grieg.
Wirtgen had to settle for 2nd, but Vesuvio had a good team result with Onodera and Pelikan also finishing inside the Top 20, and De Bod narrowly missing out. The win in the team standings was the reward for this depth; it's 381 points for the Luxembourgers.
Team depth is also what brings Tinkoff up to 3rd place, despite Yatsevich as their highest finisher only ending up 8th in the GC. With Goldstein and Vorobev, they have two more in the Top 20 - but what definitely made the difference between a decent and a good result for them was Samolenkov's performance; the sprinter won a stage and finished 3rd in the other sprint stage, ending up 2nd in the points standings. 312 points for the Russian outfit.
In Colombia, one rider clearly throned above all others: Pierre-Henri Lecuisinier. Two stage wins, the GC win, the points win - 371 points for the Evonik leader. But that isn't all - Foss and Eenkhoorn took 23rd and 24th in the GC, and the team won the team standings - netting them 432 points in a PTHC race! Not a bad outcome for sure...
One dominant rider (and team) up front means a big gap to the next one - which is MOL! Did you expect that name? Well, on the last stage they got a fantastic 1-2 with Brozyna and Almeida, with the two moving up to 10th and 12th on GC respectively - and taking a 1-2 in the KoM standings as well. Almeida won the U25 standings on top of that, and the team finished 2nd in the team standings - 278 points for the Hungarians.
3rd place went to Gazelle, despite Dombrowski's questionable tactical choices that made him lose 2nd place in GC. He still was the second best individual scorer in the race, taking two 2nd places behind PHL on days 2 and 3, finishing 2nd in points. Carcueva, Karnulin and Sosnitskiy added some decent points as well, with the final score of the team being 268 points.
The rest of the month was all about the cobbles for PT, with four classics in a row - including the second monument of the year.
Italy with Strada Appia Antica came first, and saw a remarkable win by Anderberg. The race was a huge success for Aker - MOT, with Wisniowski finishing 4th and 4 more riders ending up in the Top 50 - 400 points are the current 2023 record for classics! Tinkoff were the 2nd highest scoring team - although Senechal "only" finished 5th, Kamyshev and Sulimov in 10th and 11th made sure they still got a good amount of 217 points from this race. Thereby narrowly edging out Grieg with 205 points, mainly thanks to Pedersen's 3rd place, plus some depth points by Tiller and van Gestel.
Next up was Hungary, with one of the most difficult to spell races of the calendar - Macskako Kerekparverseny. We don't know if Wisniowski got the spelling right, but he did everything right out on the road, as he won the race. Reversed roles this time with Anderberg getting 6th, pluc Potts also scoring some good points - 386 points was the 2nd best classic score of the year at this point. Polanc then proved that top-notch cobbles skills aren't necessarily a must-have to do well on the PT cobbles, taking 2nd place and leading Evonik to 214 points. Van der Haar also contributed some good points. 3rd place went to Per and Carlsberg, both in the race and in the team points. Only Mestric contributed more than minimum finishing points - 169 points for the Danes.
And then came the biggest race of the month, monument #2 of the year - Ronde van Vlaanderen. And if Polanc surprised pretty much everyone in Hungary, people were left speechless when he actually soloed to the win in Oudenaarde! With Neilands and Van der Haar also finishing inside the Top 20, Evonik racked up 390 points - new 2nd best value of the year! Pedersen sprinted to 2nd, leading Grieg to 2nd place as well. Stokbro, De Gendt and Tiller all picked up more than minimum points as well, making it a total of 257 for the Scandinavians. Fellow Scandinavians Aker, who had won both previous races, missed out on a race podium this time, but still were the 3rd best team. Wisniowski in 4th and Anderberg in 14th were their highest scorers - 234 points in total.
And what does that mean in terms of overall scoring? Well, it means that the cobbles win over the stage races - Aker come out on top! They scored 1,593 this month, in just 15 race days - despite Praha having mediocre scoring at best, that's a PpRD of 106.20! More than a hundred points per day of racing - definitely worth getting up on such a day!
Evonik are the only ones who get pretty close, mostly thanks to PHL Colombia domination and Polanc' monumental RvV win. It's 1,459 points for them, but their PpRD this month actually is "only" the 4th best. Still the strongest by far of those who did the PTHC race, though.
It then was a very close fight for 3rd, between two teams who like TTs and cobbles - Tinkoff and Grieg. Both can't be fully satisfied with their cobbles campaign so far, but they're still 3rd and 4th this month - with the Russians winning the battle 1,197 vs. 1,192. They're the two final teams crossing the 1,000 points mark.
We also have a close call for the final Top 5 spot, which goes to King Power, edging out Rabobank with 993 vs. 982. Amaysim also scored above 900 points, taking 7th place.
Carlsberg, MOL and Lidl are the final Top 10 teams in March, with only the Danes not racing in Colombia. They're also the last teams above 800 points - scoring more than half of Aker's points this month.
It's then 4 teams within just 54 points - a rare sight given the big point gaps we've had so far - with Gazelle, ELCO, cycleYorkshire and Puma ranging from 765 for the former to 709 for the latter.
The final Top 15 spot goes to the dominators of the first two months, EA Vesuvio, with 667 points. None of the post-February Top 3 actually did particularly well this month, with Cedevita following just behind EA in 16th, and Polar in 18th. ZARA are in between.
On the final four spots - below 500 points - are ISA, Binance, Minions and Moser; the latter didn't even get 400 points, but still have a slightly higher PpRD than Binance who were racing in Colombia.
Team
Ned
PKVP
Col
Appia
Mac
RvV
E3
Total
RD
PpRD
1
Aker - MOT
238
71
0
400
386
234
264
1593
15
106.20
2
Evonik - ELKO
126
40
432
107
214
390
150
1459
21
69.48
3
Tinkoff - La Datcha Team
197
312
0
217
95
173
203
1197
15
79.80
4
Grieg-Maersk
42
453
0
205
137
257
98
1192
15
79.47
5
King Power
104
237
0
85
158
197
212
993
15
66.20
6
Rabobank
293
153
0
111
83
195
147
982
15
65.47
7
Amaysim Australia.com
470
227
64
40
40
40
47
928
21
44.19
8
Carlsberg - Danske Bank
55
58
0
196
169
150
260
888
15
59.20
9
MOL Cycling Team
63
73
278
111
120
94
132
871
21
41.48
10
Lidl Cycling
136
154
209
84
100
99
44
826
21
39.33
11
Gazelle
103
30
268
76
41
155
92
765
21
36.43
12
ELCO - ABEA
235
237
0
80
83
60
50
745
15
49.67
13
cycleYorkshire
398
123
0
45
75
40
40
721
15
48.07
14
Team Puma - SAP
174
292
0
64
74
45
60
709
15
47.27
15
EA Vesuvio
126
381
0
40
40
40
40
667
15
44.47
16
Cedevita
90
275
0
45
67
103
59
639
15
42.60
17
ZARA - Irizar
40
47
240
45
73
50
40
535
21
25.48
18
Polar
45
261
0
64
50
45
50
515
15
34.33
19
ISA - Hexacta
195
79
0
48
64
50
53
489
15
32.60
20
Binance
41
42
122
45
64
76
59
449
21
21.38
21
Minions
115
117
0
35
51
45
54
417
15
27.80
22
Moser - Sygic
125
56
0
40
58
40
40
359
15
23.93
Full Ranking
The previous Top 3 doing not very well obviously means we have quite some reshuffling - fortunately for EA Vesuvio, Praha still made it in this update, otherwise they'd even have lost their lead! They actually got the bare minimum points from all four cobbled races - the only team to do so. But it was still enough to keep the lead, totalling 2,875 points by the end of March.
But Aker got pretty close with their sensational month, trailing by less than 300 points now, and jumping from 13th to 2nd! It's 2,607 points for them. Cedevita actually only dropped a single spot to 3rd, with 2,399 points they're still on a great track!
MOL defend their 4th place, but being one of just two teams having raced 64 days already, they're PpRD isn't exactly great. However, a lot of racing also means a lot of PTHC RDs already done. With 2,291 points, they're 43 points ahead of Polar, who dropped from 3rd to 5th.
In 6th place, we have the top improving team of the month - Evonik, who were down in 20th and now are easily sitting inside the Top 10. After using 6 PHL race days that is. Why do I mention that? Well, because we have Puma in 7th, with 2,117 points (77 behind Evonik), and they've only used 2 Herklotz RDs yet. Big battle incoming?
With Carlsberg, we have a second newly promoted team in the Top 10 (in case you forgot, Cedevita also were in PCT last year - incredible, right?), even gaining a spot thanks to some outstanding Per-formances. They're just 60 points behind Puma, and actually have the better PpRD - but no Herklotz ^^
Tinkoff are the final team above 2,000 points, and they also did a big jump this month, from 18th to 9th.
There was quite a fight for the final Top 10 spot, with 4 teams separated by just 45 points - ELCO stay inside the Top 10, whereas Grieg also made some good progress from 19th to 11th. Amaysim and King Power are the other two teams in this block.
Gazelle and Zara round off the Top 15; both are above 1,800 points. Lidl are slightly behind, whereas cycleYorkshire on the final safe spot and Moser on the first relegation spot are just 16 points apart. Rabobank are still (or again?) rather close, 74 points behind safety; ISA are already 200 points off, with Binance and especially Minions looking pretty desperate already.
But if I've learnt one thing - never draw any conclusions prior to the GT season - which is about to start! Good luck to all - and here are the current standings:
It was to be expected, and it did happen - Tom Wirtgen used Praha to overtake Jasper Philipsen, who had an awful race in the Netherlands. Wirtgen now leads 1,036 vs. 824.
But the one rider really doing magic this month was Lukasz Wisniowksi - he scored 773 points in 11 RDs (the cobbles plus Nederland), bringing his total up to 794 points - 3rd place!
Taylor Phinney didn't race and stays in 5th place, whereas Bryan Coquard did a decent job both in Nederland and Praha to move up one spot from 6th to 5th. Similar Scheme for Filippo Ganna, gaining one spot with a good Praha result.
The Slovenian duo of David Per and Jan Polanc also had a fantastic month, scoring 630 respectively 600 points, and moving up to 7th and 8th. Mads Würtz also entered the Top 10, but with a less impressive jump - from 16th to 9th, thanks to his Praha win.
Caleb Ewan dropped one spot to take the final place in the Top 10, despite doing rather well in the Netherlands (but not that much in Czechia).
With 4 new Top 10 riders, there are also 4 dropping out - Gaviria (5 -> 11), Kudus (4 -> 13), Van der Lijke (10 -> 16) and Galta (8 -> 19). With the first GT of the year about to start, we can expect some more movement for sure!
Oh boy. I really like that one. 645 points for Per so far without even taking into account his runner-up in Roubaix just now. He's certainly on pace to outscore last year, without that Roubaix win. makes the training feel a lot more worth it. He should definitively be the second highest scoring cobbler with Roubaix included.
Nothing good out of our other races early in the month, unfortunately. AKA and Kamna flopped hard in those respectively, though the losses were marginal with minor points being our likely peak anyway.
As you say though, GT season is upon us now, and that will be the real test. We need big scoring in the Giro because the Ardennes will be rough. Our best part of the season is already over, and we're only in 8th. Plenty of room to fall, that's for sure.
Thanks for the awesome update Fabianski!
RIP Exxon Duke, David Veilleux, Double Feature, and Monster Energy
Happy about 10th so far after the cobbles, which isn’t exactly our best side.
However the GT’s definately aren’t either, and with only a small gap, and a somewhat spread field of GC contenders the relegation spots is a highly likely position after the Giro d’Italia and Liechtenstein races.
I was hoping we'd be out of the last 5 places after the cobbles season, but Gerts didn't have some great results there so we are still in a very bad spot. With the Paris - Roubaix win we are probably out of that zone, but GT won't be our friends so we'll be probably back into it after Il Giro.
It's going to be a very hard task to stay up this season, but the battle is far from over. It has just started.
This was supposed to be the first good month with Colombia and a bunch of decent but not great races. It ended way better than that with Polanc entering beast mode so I'm excited about how much we climbed up.
Now where does this leave us for the ranking? Well, first of all we should be back in the podium fight now. But it's not as positive as one might think because we already wasted a bunch of Lopez race days.
A huge month for us in total, eventhough we got the less of it towards the end with Ronde van Vlaanderen and Roubaix, though, the latter in April and not in March. What we did before the monuments was amazing! Thrilled to see us rack up points and put ourselves in contention for a top 5 finish, and maybe also a podium spot. Though, as Fabianski and others have written, it all comes down to the GTs and how they play out.
Not the best of months, especially with the cobblestones, so this doesn't come unexpected. Luckily better times seem ahead with Kinoshita in the Ardennes. It will be difficult but we haven't lost hope yet.
Groves with an unexpected (prior to the season) scoring in RvN is nice, ofc. Our PpRd ain't promising, though not really surprising with a lot of cobbles days done. Durbridge delivered most recently and obviously Haig's Giro output will be our key race of the year anyway.
Congrats to Aker on a great month! Even though we are fourth in March, this is probably our best month on paper, so we had hoped to get a bit more out of the month. A bit worrying to see that the gap down to relegation zone isn't especially big, so we'll just have to attack the coming races now.
It was never going to be a good month for us, but I think we did pretty well with what we have. Praha was solid and we had a couple of nice outings at Nederland and RVV. I expect the next month will be even rougher for us with only the Giro as a potential good scoring race. We just gotta keep holding on until some of our more suited races come up again.
Not our best month which sees us slide down a bit. We've had some misfortune in one or 2 races but then the reality is we're not a cobbled team so this was always going to be a tricky period.
Wellens saved us somewhat with his performance in Colombia.
We're currently teetering a bit but I have faith that the team will right the ship!
Even after strong PPRD scoring in this update we slip to just outside the relegation zone
I hope it doesn't stay that way and with cobbles season almost over, I hope this means we can look to midtable security rather than a relegation firefight. I guess it all depends on Yates and how well he does during the Ardennes campaign...
John St Ledger in Team Bunzl-Centrica and Team U25
