After the first two GTs are done, June was much calmer for PT teams, with only one mandatory 3-day race in Scandinavia, plus up to four PTHC stage races. Not a single classic this month, therefore.
However, with there being some administrative issues with Dauphiné and Scandinavia, and the races taking place later than planned, there were just 3 races left in "actual" June. Not enough for a meaningful ranking update - hence we have June and July combined here.
July had even less races - just three, thereof two PTHC ones - but it also had THE race, Le Tour de France! And so, unlike you might expect it, we won't split the ranking into June/July, but rather into TdF/non-TdF races!
Let's start with the non-TdF races. One PT race and 6 PTHC events are part of this block. Every team did between 2 and 4 of the PTHC races, racing more than the bare minimum but also not hitting the upper bound.
First came the Franceville Classique. Which no longer was a classic, despite the name - it was a two-day stage race; exactly the kind of race that was banned from the calendar last year, but is back now. Two-day stage race means roughly twice as many points available as in a classic, with the same RD cost.
Therefore, the highest scoring team had a pretty insane PpRD of 152.5 here! Multiply this with 2, and you get Aker's score of 305 points - which for example is just 45 points less than Carlsberg scored in 8 days in Portugal at the same race level... Why did Aker score so well? One name: Wisniowski. 236 points alone for the World Champion, who won stage 2 and the GC and took 3rd in points. Anderberg was a reliable domestique once again, scoring half of the "missing" points (35) by finishing 16th on day 2 and in the GC. Potts, Laporte and Ariesen all finished in the Top 50 as well, with Aker taking 3rd in the team standings. Unstoppable... at least on the cobbles.
However, it wasn't as clear a win as one might have guessed. The 2nd best team was just 29 points back - the 3rd team only one additional point back. 2nd goes to... Grieg! Finally, one might think, after lots of lackluster Pedersen races. The Dane finished 3rd on both days and in the GC, taking home the green jersey for being the most constant rider over two days. 187 points for him. Most of the remaining points were scored by Tiller, 15th in GC, and Stokbro, finishing 25th. And Grieg also came 2nd in team standings - 276 points in total.
As mentioned before, the 3rd best team was just 1 point down, so that's 275 points for... Tinkoff! Sure, their best GC result was "only" a 5th place by Senechal - who finished 2nd on day one and 5th in stage two, taking 2nd in points. But Kamyshev in 9th and Sulimov in 18th added some very precious points, too. And with 3 in the Top 20, it's easy to guess that the Russians also won the team competition.
By the way - "team" is not really a thing for Per, who finished 2nd in GC - of Carlsberg's 183 points, 173 were scored by their leader, which is why they're only in 4th place...
The Tour of East Java no longer has the previous simple format - one flat stage, one mountain stage - it's now three chances for the sprinters and still a single shot for the GC contenders.
Whereas the points jersey nowadays is for the sprinters, the big points are still for the stage racers. And the high-score for one of the world's top riders, Lecuisinier. Winning the decisive stage 3 meant the GC win as well, despite a dangerous split on the final day. 244 points for the Frenchman, who also finished 3rd in the KoM standings. Scoring-wise, he got some support from Gavars (28th), Polanc (29th) and Blums (35th), making Evonik end up with 292 points.
It's maybe a bit surprising that the 2nd highest scoring team are Gazelle! But they started off very well, with Mundle taking 2nd place on day 1 - the Liechtenstein native ended up contributing 32 points. The team's top scorer obviously was Warchol, rounding off the GC Top 5 and bringing home 109 points. But the decisive factor for their big scoring is their amazing depth - Senni (14th) and Karnulin (17th) ended up in the Top 20, Vervaeke (30th) and Sosnitskiy (33rd) got a Top 50. And the team took 2nd in the team standings - if not for that weird split on day 4, they'd have won this classification... But still, it's 250 points for them and a great outcome!
You definitely don't need a GC podium to score big, as Binance prove as well! Carsi's pretty consistent sprinting (6th, 11th, 2nd) was worth 3rd in points and 35 points overall for the Turk. GC-wise, Tenorio took 7th, whereas Figueiredo - on s.t.! - ended up 19th. Bartl in 22nd, Perez (41st) and Benito (42nd) added some depth points as well, which all in all adds up to 204 points for Binance.
By the way, runner-up Barguil's Lidl only got discount points besides their leader (191 for Barguil, 10 for the team), hence they only ended up in 4th place. Looks like a recurring pattern...
Next up was the traditional clash Tour de Suisse - Dauphiné Libéré. However, since both races got demoted to PTHC last year, it isn't a clash anymore for most teams. Only 4 teams did both races this year, so not many restrictions in terms of leaders and support team!
Which means that a pretty strong field was present in Switzerland for the Tour de Suisse. And wow, was this a nailbiting finale! The decision on the GC win came down to a sprint à deux on the final stage - with defending champion Bernal winning the stage and the GC! After a 2nd place on stage 5, being 4" faster in the stage 6 ITT than Haig was key to get back-to-back wins. And 294 points, by also taking the points jersey and 3rd in KoM. But as luxury domestique Shikai dropped from 9th to 17th on the last day, it's not many depth points for Polar. Shikai still scores decently, and in the end the Fins leave Switzerland with 337 points in the bag.
Haig took the race lead after his stage win on day 5, to lose it in the 2nd head-to-head against Bernal on the final stage. Still, it's 238 points for the Australian. Kennaugh, who won the opening stage and stayed in yellow until Haig took over, scored 79 points. With another 8 points by 4 Top 100 finishers, it's 325 points for Amaysim - not a bad outcome for a non-GC-winning team.
It's then a gap of over 100 points down to 3rd. 3rd was a PCT team, actually, but 3rd among the PT representatives were the Pumas! Whereas they didn't get the big points from the GC - Zimmermann and THJ still secured two Top 20 finishes with 19th and 20th - they had solid depth, with Madouas (33rd), Zwiehoff (42nd) and Schinnagel (49th) also in the Top 50. But what really boosted their score were the back-to-back stage wins on days 3 and 4 by Madouas and Kanter. The latter had also taken 2nd on the opening day and ended up 3rd in the points standings. THJ finished 3rd in the U25 standings - all in all, that's 219 points for the Germans. Which is 2 more than Cedevita, so it was a close fight for 3rd best (PT) team!
While some PCT teams did well in Switzerland, one PCT representative actually really kicked the PT teams' butts in Dauphiné. OK, the win still went to PT - but not the highest score, as you can find out in the PCT update.
In the end, the race was basically decided by the Prologue, where Morton gained 20" on Areruya. The latter was clearly stronger in the hilly stages - but winning the closing stage with the hardest MTF turned out to be enough for the Aussie. He also had two 2nd places and a 3rd place, leading to him taking 2nd in points as well. It's 308 points for him - but with only Ballerini, Skaarseth and Holmes picking up some additional points - the former for a 5th place on stage 4, the latter for Top 100 GC results - it's "only" 317 points for cycleYorkshire. They'll still be happy with that, and send a decent cheque down to PCT's Choi for denying Areruya 4 additional bonus seconds...
Next in line - rather unsurprisingly as well - are Polar. Latour mostly had a really strong race, with a 2nd, two 3rd and one 4th places - although it's exactly that 4th place, with a gap to the Top 3, that almost cost him a well-deserved GC podium. 3rd place for him in the race, and 3rd best individual scorer with 222 points. Carpenter added a 41st place to that, with Barthe, Nych and Oldani also finishing inside the Top 100 - 235 points for Polar.
Not far behind, with 220 points in total, we find what probably is the most surprising name - ISA! Of course, they were strong in the sprints, with Contreras taking 2nd on day 2, and even winning stage 4. Otherwise, however, they were pretty anonymous - but they had five Top 50 finishers in the GC! Pinot may have been a little lucky to get the final Top 10 spot despite a 4 minute deficit, but 10th place is 10th place. Bongiorno was 14th, Parra Bustamente 24th, AvN 34th and Paez 42nd. And they actually had every single rider inside the Top 100, hats off for such great depth! It hasn't been working out for them too often this year, but here it definitely did.
June's final race then was the mandatory PT-rated Scandinavia Open Road Race. Three days, one hilly prologue, two hilly road stages.
And you all know, there's one rule in PT. From the outside, it's a really boring rule, but surely not for the rider in question. That rule says: If Herklotz races, Herklotz wins. And he did win indeed. He didn't care about not being the best prologue specialist, or not being the best puncheur on paper - he was the best puncheur in reality. After a solid prologue, he just outpaced the world's best puncheur on day 2, and beat him again on stage 3 which was even more climber-friendly anyway. Two stage wins, GC win, points win - classic Herklotz style. With his 388 points, it didn't matter so much that the other riders didn't contribute big time - although Madouas' 30th place isn't bad, either. Stork and Cemazar also finished inside the Top 50 - and Ganna even got some KoM points. All in all, it's 450 points for the Pumas - but most notably, Herklotz continues his 100% win streak. Not 100% of the stages, but 100% of his races. The other managers will be happy that he only has one more race left...
You may think that Puma actually crushed their opponents here with such a dominant performance. Well, not quite. The gap over 2nd is "only" 56 points - and in 2nd place we have... Cedevita! They did send both their top climbers to this race, and it surely paid off! TGH was 5th on stage 3, which led to 4th in GC, thanks to a good prologue. Pogacar was 9th on day 3 and 10th in GC, also ending up 2nd in U25. But look at their depth: Craddock 14th, Habtemichael 17th, Borisavljevic 22nd, Bouchard 37th, Gaudu 55th, Buitrago 58th - that's everyone in the Top 60! This great tem performance was also rewarded by 2nd in the team standings, losing out on the win just because of a slightly slower combined time in the prologue. Overall, it's 394 points for the Slovenians!
Slower than whom in the prologue? Well, obviously slower than EA Vesuvio! The Luxembourgers (and not Liechtensteinians, as mentioned in the report) were off to a great start, with Wirtgen dominating the prologue. He couldn't quite follow the top riders on the final day, but Valter stepped in for a 7th place GC finish. Wirtgen still finished 9th, nothing to scoff at. Girdlestone (23rd) and Cabrera (46th) also finished inside the Top 50 - and the team won the U25 standings by 4" over Cedevita. Valter took the U25 standings - again ahead of a Cedevita rider - but overall, they scored slightly less than the men in orange, with 379 points.
Just in case you wonder, MOL with runner-up Phinney and Evonik with 3rd-placed Lopez came next, as the final teams above 300 points.
Not much respite for the PT riders then, with Le Tour starting on 3rd of July - but those not racing there had until mid-July to recover. And mid-July, we had the Philadelphia International Championship. A Championship for the sprinters, so to say, where some of the fastest men from PT and PCT met.
However, it wasn't a great day for the PT men, taking only 4/10 Top 10 spots - and even missing out on the win... It was Kemboi who somewhat saved PT's honour here, getting 2nd place and 125 points for Lidl. AKA took 4th place for Carlsberg, who also had Resell in 14th place and another Top 50 finisher with Forssell - 114 points for the Danes. Nych was the 3rd best PT finisher in 6th place, with Polar picking up 2 more points with Krul in the Top 50. 72 points for the Finns. All other PT teams finished below 50 points - what a contrast to Veenendaal, where we had 8 50+ scorers!
And last but not least in the non-TdF-block, there was the Tour of Slovenia. Hills, a long ITT and a TTT on top of that - no question which team this parcours favoured.
It was obviously EA Vesuvio, with Wirtgen as their leader - and the Luxembourger indeed won yet another stage race this year after Paris - Nice and Lithuania. He didn't even need to win the ITT, where he came 2nd with a 2" deficit - but EA had won the stage 2 TTT before, so in the end it was enough to "just" hold onto the front group on the hilly stages. He did the latter so well that he even won the points jersey on top of the GC. Otherwise, they didn't have their usual depth for once, with many riders missing out on splits here or there. Onodera ended up being their only other rider in the Top 50. Tanfield led the race for 2 days, hence picking up solid points, too - besides Wirtgen's 248 points, his teammates scored 87 points combined, for a total of 335 points for EA.
On the other hand, 2nd place went to a team with a massive depth result. Lead Puma Ganna actually missed out on the GC podium - and on the ITT stage podium as well - but his teammates more than made up for that. Stork in 12th (and 2nd U25), Brändle in 14th, Cavagna in 20th, Kmieliauskas in 35th (and 3rd U25), O'Brien in 39th - 6 riders in the Top 40 for Puma! They weren't necessarily the strongest ones on paper, but they sure were extremely clever - which also led to Puma taking 2nd in team standings. All in all, Ganna scored "only" 129 points - but Puma got 300 points from this race!
The same statement about depth actually holds for 3rd place as well, which went to Cedevita! With 287 points, they're 13 points behind Puma - which is exactly the difference between Ganna's and Geoghegan Hart's score, so the rest of the Cedevita team scored exactly as much as the rest of the Pumas. The Slovenians won the team standings in their home race, and in addition to Tao's 5th place, they had Lammertink in 11th, Habtemichael in 13th, Craddock in 21st, Nareklishvili in 24th and Christodoulos in 48th - 6 in the Top 50!
By the way, Bernal's Polar came just 5 points short of 3rd place, whereas GC runner-up and ITT winner Würtz' Grieg only scored 199 points.
These 7 races result in the following scores:
Team
w/o Le Tour
1
Cedevita
1123
2
Polar
1095
3
Team Puma - SAP
1014
4
EA Vesuvio
854
5
Evonik - ELKO
711
6
MOL Cycling Team
673
7
Carlsberg - Danske Bank
622
8
ZARA - Irizar
583
9
Lidl Cycling
528
10
ISA - Hexacta
525
11
Grieg-Maersk
520
12
cycleYorkshire
495
13
Gazelle
479
14
Binance
461
15
Amaysim Australia.com
460
16
King Power
455
17
Tinkoff - La Datcha Team
407
18
Aker - MOT
395
19
Minions
338
20
Rabobank
335
21
Moser - Sygic
166
22
ELCO - ABEA
131
Cedevita, Polar and Puma had some really strong races in there, with the Slovenians making full use of their home race to win this block.
EA with a decent score as well, with Evonik rounding off the Top 5. Then MOL, Carlsberg and ZARA, followed by the big midfield ranging from Lidl in 9th to King Power in 16th - 8 teams separated by just 73 points!
Tinkoff and Aker are two of the teams not participating in the EJ/TdS/Dauphiné clash at all (like Grieg who did well without and ELCO who didn't), whereas Minions and Rabobank probably are even less happy with their scores.
Moser had a disastrous couple of months with just 166 points from TdS, Dauphiné, Scandinavia and Philadelphia, whereas ELCO can't be happy, either, but at least they spent some less RDs.
But as always in months with a GT - whatever the best teams rack up in terms of points in the other races, the best GT teams outscore them all. And although the "other races" block here spans over two months, this is still true.
And the best team in Le Tour - surprise, surprise - was Evonik. Pierre-Henri Lecuisinier finally fulfilled their ever-recurring (except for last year) goal of winning the Tour de France, with a pretty comfortable margin in the end. On his way to triumphing in Paris, he won 4 stages, and finished 3rd in both points and KoM standings. The Frenchman scored 1,373 points - which is the highest score by a rider in a race this year, but still 130 points less than Herklotz picked up last year.
PHL's teammates weren't overly productive, though, with none of them getting any stage or special classification points (except for 2 team points for the Top 5 finishers). Eenkhoorn added a decent GC result, though, with 25th place; Gavars, Koch and Plapp got a Top 100, while the remaining three riders just got the minimum 10 finisher points. All in all, that's 1,530 points for Evonik - obviously the highscore for this year, but still 156 points lower than last year's record (Puma @ Le Tour).
In what might have been his last realistic shot at a GC win, Phinney gave PHL a great fight - but the Frenchie was just too strong in the mountains. Phinney still won both time trial stages and took four 2nd places - actually having more stage podiums than PHL - and got rewarded by 2nd place in the GC and in the points standings. He even cracked the 1,000 points mark as well - something no rider did in the Giro, and here we have two of them (on a higher points scale, to be fair). 1,068 points for the American. his teammates picked up 134 points, with Stancu being their only other Top 50 finisher. 5 riders got a Top 100, and overall that's 1,202 points for MOL - the 3rd best score this year.
And we even have a 3rd team scoring 1,000+ points here! And no, that's not mainly thanks to a great GC rider - but thanks to a great (punchy) sprinter! Yates won his first stage on day 5, when he also took over the points jersey - and never gave it away! He won two more stages, and proudly presented the green jersey on the podium in Paris. 687 points for Yates - 3rd place in the individual rankings. But cycleYorkshire also had Carthy, who won stage 14 and finished 10th on GC, picking up 274 points. So that's 961 points for cycleYorkshire's leaders - with Williams' 40th place plus mostly just finisher points for the rest of the team, that's 1,052 points and the 5th best score in 2023 for the Brits!
Completing the Top 5 are two teams separated by just 20 points. Lidl had a very strong Barguil, who might have finished on the GC podium without the two long ITTs but in the end took 5th place. He also took 3 stage podiums and ended up being the 5th best scorer in this race. Other highlights for Lidl surely were Mansouri's stage 15 win from the breakaway, and Peak's 2nd place on the opening day. A very solid 917 points for Lidl!
Close behind are Cedevita, who got 6th place in GC and an easy U25 win by Pogacar. With their great depth - Habtemichael in 16th, Borisavljevic in 22nd, Bouchard in 33rd - they could even compensate for Rajovic's weak sprinting. Cedevita also won the teams competition, and reached a total of 897 points.
Only in 6th place we have Polar with GC podium finisher Bernal. The team's only stage win was taken by sprinter Philipsen on day 2 - his only highlight though, being pretty weak otherwise. All in all, it's 848 points for the Finns - their best GT result this year, despite the surprising Giro win.
7th then goes to Tinkoff, who most notably had Sivakov in 4th place, and Samolenkov being anonymous - except for the most prestigious stage, the Champs Elysées, where he won. But we still have to mention their good depth, with all of Rikunov, Arslanov, Vlasov and Foliforov making the GC Top 50 alongside Sivakov! 748 points for the Russians - exactly 100 less than Polar one spot higher.
Gazelle - with stage 19 and KoM jersey winner Warchol - and Minions - with stage 1 winner Kalaba and 8th on GC Cattaneo - are the other teams above 700 points, totalling 729 and 705 points respectively.
Rounding off the Top 10 are Moser with 508 points - already 200 points behind Minions, and scoring just 1/3 of Evonik's points. GC rider Hirt (7th place) and stage 4 winner Cerny were their best scorers.
Pretty close behind - 20 to 30 points - we have 3 more teams: Rabobank, King Power and Carlsberg with 488, 479 and 478 points. ISA are the final team above 400 points, with ELCO rounding off the Top 15 with 387 points.
Binance, Grieg, Aker and EA all scored above 300 points - despite Grieg even getting a stage win with Nesset. However, another stage winning team did even worse, with Amaysim (Kennaugh sprinting to glory on day 11) ending up with 297 points.
However, for two teams this Tour de France was just a plain disaster - Puma and ZARA. Both couldn't even score 200 points - something every team did in La Vuelta - and the Spaniards' 127 points even are the 2nd lowest GT score of the year, right behind Rabobank's horrible Giro outcome.
Here are the full numbers for the 2023 Tour de France:
Team
Le Tour
1
Evonik - ELKO
1530
2
MOL Cycling Team
1202
3
cycleYorkshire
1052
4
Lidl Cycling
917
5
Cedevita
897
6
Polar
848
7
Tinkoff - La Datcha Team
748
8
Gazelle
729
9
Minions
705
10
Moser - Sygic
508
11
Rabobank
488
12
King Power
479
13
Carlsberg - Danske Bank
478
14
ISA - Hexacta
409
15
ELCO - ABEA
387
16
Binance
377
17
Grieg-Maersk
358
18
Aker - MOT
338
19
EA Vesuvio
326
20
Amaysim Australia.com
293
21
Team Puma - SAP
189
22
ZARA - Irizar
127
And how does the full June/July update look like?
Just like in the last update, the team of the GT winner comes out on top - Evonik were the clear #1 in the Tour, as well as being 5th in the other races, resulting in 2,241 points. And, maybe even more impressively, a PpRD of 64 - higher than Puma in the previous update!
2nd place goes to the only other team cracking the 2,000 points barrier - which is already impressive enough, but it's even more impressive to do so as a newly promoted team! Cedevita, the "other races" winner, take 2nd place in this block - sure, they were among the 3 teams spending 45 race days in this block, but with the 3rd best PpRD it's still a fantastic performance!
The podium is rounded off by Polar, who were 2nd in the non-TdF block and 6th in Le Tour. 1,943 points scored by the Finns, also spending 45 race days, for the 4th highest PpRD in this update. Bernal deserves a special mention, scoring more than 1,000 points in this block - as one out of just 3 riders!
The final rider to do so obviously was Phinney, who only needed the Tour for this (but added almost 300 points in Scandinavia, too). The American led MOL to 4th place (with the 2nd best PpRD, though!), with the Hungarians totalling 1,875 points - less than 70 points behind the podium, and "just" 366 behind Evonik.
Which is almost as much as they're above the rest, though, as we have a clear gap between 4th and 5th. 5th goes to cycleYorkshire with their fantastic Tour by Yates (and Carthy), 328 points behind MOL. In absolute numbers, that's 1,547 points, almost 700 less than Evonik already.
Lidl follow roughly 100 points behind, having a 200 points gap to the next teams. "Next teams" here means a block of 6, separated by just 165 points, from 7th to 12th. Gazelle - with the 5th highest PpRD of the update - lead this block with 1,208 points, just 5 points more than Puma. EA Vesuvio are 23 points down and have a 25 points advantage over Tinkoff (so yeah, that's 4 teams within 53 points).
Behind the Russians, who round off the Top 10, we have Carlsberg and Minions as the final teams above 1,000 points. The Top 10 actually all have PpRD values above 30, the remaining 12 teams are below.
ISA and King Power then share 13th place with 934 points, about 100 points behind Minions. Grieg are another 50 points down rounding off the Top 15, but they actually have the 12th best PpRD in these two months.
Binance and Rabobank both are above 800 points, which was required to be outside the bottom 5 spots. The bottom 5 are led by Amaysim, who barely are above 20 PpRD with 753 points. Aker are 20 points behind, with ZARA also just above 700 points. The Spaniards however needed 40 RDs to get there.
In the last two spots, we have Moser and ELCO, the backmarkers of the "other races" block. Alongside ZARA, we have a trio failing to get 20 PpRD in this update - this can't be good for the overall rankings I guess...
But before looking at the standings, here are the full numbers for June/July:
Team
FrC
EJ
TdS
Dau
Sca
TdF
Phi
Slo
Total
RD
PpRD
1
Evonik - ELKO
0
292
74
0
345
1530
0
0
2241
35
64.03
2
Cedevita
0
0
217
200
394
897
25
287
2020
45
44.89
3
Polar
0
0
337
235
169
848
72
282
1943
45
43.18
4
MOL Cycling Team
96
73
135
0
369
1202
0
0
1875
37
50.68
5
cycleYorkshire
0
0
19
317
46
1052
19
94
1547
45
34.38
6
Lidl Cycling
0
201
0
79
79
917
125
44
1445
42
34.40
7
Gazelle
62
250
0
0
167
729
0
0
1208
30
40.27
8
Team Puma - SAP
45
0
219
0
450
189
0
300
1203
38
31.66
9
EA Vesuvio
0
0
140
0
379
326
0
335
1180
36
32.78
10
Tinkoff - La Datcha Team
275
0
0
0
70
748
0
62
1155
31
37.26
11
Carlsberg - Danske Bank
183
0
0
196
57
478
114
72
1100
40
27.50
12
Minions
0
0
163
0
51
705
0
124
1043
36
28.97
13
ISA - Hexacta
0
0
0
220
113
409
25
167
934
38
24.58
14
King Power
96
0
0
115
244
479
0
0
934
35
26.69
15
Grieg-Maersk
276
0
0
0
45
358
0
199
878
31
28.32
16
Binance
49
204
0
76
125
377
7
0
838
39
21.49
17
Rabobank
153
0
0
35
122
488
25
0
823
35
23.51
18
Amaysim Australia.com
17
62
325
0
56
293
0
0
753
37
20.35
19
Aker - MOT
305
0
0
0
48
338
0
42
733
31
23.65
20
ZARA - Irizar
0
195
108
0
148
127
0
132
710
40
17.75
21
Moser - Sygic
0
0
35
48
40
508
43
0
674
40
16.85
22
ELCO - ABEA
35
0
0
0
69
387
0
27
518
31
16.71
Full Ranking
Do you remember the guy who said - and repeated - that Aker are unstoppable? Well, he wasn't exactly right - at least not for now!
Because we do have a new leader again - it's TdF and June/July winners Evonik! The Latvians (riding under German flag) now top the division with 6,246 points, having scored more than 1/3 of their total points in these two months! And despite PHL being done with his 2023 campaign, they should have some decent chances of actually staying ahead...
But Aker will definitely want to take back the lead! They didn't have the best couple of races, scoring just 1/3 of Evonik's points in this period - but they only trail by 122 points now, and have a slight RD advantage and the better PpRD! It might well come down to some duels MAL vs. Mohoric and Polanc vs. Wisniowski for the win - it's definitely not over yet!
Polar also had a great period; not quite as great as Evonik who moved up from 7th to the top, but jumping from 6th to 3rd is nothing to scoff at nonetheless. As mentioned before, especially Bernal did a fantastic job in this block. However, the Columbian is already done with his season, with Latour, Shikai and Philipsen not having much left, either. Will it be enough to defend the podium spot? 6,070 points mean they do have a 153 points gap right now, so there's some margin, but...
...but the next team is EA Vesuvio, who have survived their potentially weakest period of the year - the GT months - and should have multiple good races left. 5,917 points is their current score, and they have the 3rd best PpRD average, being projected 55 points ahead of Polar in the end.
You may ask: but where are the Pumas? Well, they dropped two spots, from 3rd to 5th, after a horrible Tour de France. The rest of these two months was decent in terms of points, but with only the 10th best PpRD in June/July, the drop still was inevitable. Moreover, they're 2 PpRD down on Vesuvio now, and they only have 26 RDs to fix that - thereof 2 by Herklotz. Although it seemed unthinkable to most, missing out on the podium could actually happen - even missing out on the Top 5?
Their closest rivals currently are the surprise team of the year, if I dare to say - Cedevita. The Slovenians are 6th, with 5,727 points - just 124 behind Puma. Some of the remaining races might not suit them overly well - but in TT races they have a 2 vs. 1 advantage over Ganna, and so far they also have the more successful sprinters. Getting that Top 5 won't be easy - but nor is it impossible!
However, with Gazelle we have another team lurking just 80 points behind, but with some additional races to do. However, with their main strength being mountain stage races, it remains to be seen whether Lutsenko and Teunissen can close the gap to the Top 5. The trend is rather pointing in the other direction, with Gazelle dropping from 4th to 7th in this update.
Another team losing 3 spots are Tinkoff, and the Russions now are almost 300 points behind the Top 7. However, unlike other teams they might actually be glad that the GTs are over, having some better scoring potential in TTs, hills and on cobbles than with Sivakov alone in the mountains.
Next up is one of the period's big winners, MOL Cycling Team. The Hungarians were 15th in the previous update, now they're up to 9th, just 38 points behind Tinkoff. This came at the cost of spending lots of race days - no other team has more RDs used - but good old Taylor definitely delivered, and it's looking good for a Top 10 by now.
Which also holds for cycleYorkshire, who held onto their 10th place, and actually even have a better PpRD than MOL. They're 72 points behind the Hungarians - but more importantly, about 450 points ahead of 11th place!
It would be rough to say that the fight against relegation starts with 11th place - it most likely won't, but all the teams above should definitely be safe with a gap of more than 1,000 points to 18th.
The team in 11th place however can still be really happy to be there, as Lidl moved up from the immediate danger zone to relative safety! A great Tour by Barguil made them climb a lot, and with 4,809 points they may currently be more than 400 points behind the Top 10, but an almost 700 points cushion to the relegation spots isn't looking too bad.
Carlsberg are also still looking pretty good, despite dropping a spot in this update. With 4,788 points, they're just 21 behind Lidl, having two additional days to race. King Power in 13th are 200 points down, but they have 5 additional RDs left and are looking pretty good, too.
And then we get to the biggest losers of the month, Moser. 8th in the previous update, they dropped all the way down to 14th, and only have a 300 points margin over the relegation zone now! 4,442 points currently, this is where the danger zone really starts - although they do have relatively many races left compared to other teams and aren't the ones being most at risk.
This is a bit different for Amaysim, though. Just 29 points behind Moser, they are the other team besides MOL having used 157 RDs already, and having just 23 RDs left. Even more worrying, quite some hilly races are left, and McCarthy is yet to deliver a great result - he'd better do so soon, or it might be PT game over for the Aussies!
The situation is looking even worse for ZARA, who are another 105 points down. They do have an almost 200 points advantage over the first relegation spot - but they also do have the 5th lowest PpRD. They'll need some great depth from their TTers, having no world-beater, and also some Borges magic. And some luck as well, preferrably in Northern Europe.
Rabobank currently are on the last safe spot with 4,189 points, 66 points above 18th place. They'll be betting on Grosu in some sprint races, probably on Formolo in Balkans and Gerts in Northern Europe - doesn't sound bad, but it needs to work out.
Because right next to them, on the first relegation spot with 4,123 points, are Grieg. And Grieg have the world's best time triallist, Würtz, who should - on paper - win Deutschland Tour and Herbiers next month. And they have Pedersen, one of the world's top cobblers, who often failed to live up to this tag this year, but definitely has the potential of scoring big. Grieg relegating? Sounds weird - could happen, but we're not quite there yet!
The remaining four teams however really won't have an easy task to get out of their misery. ISA are first with 3,914 points - they're 275 points behind safety. The good news is that they're the team having the most RDs left with 35. The bad news is that they don't have many races left for their star rider Ewan - and the latter hasn't delivered as he should anyway. They'll need the "ISA way" to get out of there - depth, depth, depth!
ELCO are another team suffering from an underperforming lead sprinter - and an underperforming secondary sprinter as well. With the Top 2 riders being in the (newly) least reliable category, and the 3rd and 4th best not delivering at all as well, they're having a really hard time lately. 3,839 points mean they're 350 points away from safety already - a long way to go...
It's an even longer way for the final two teams, who probably won't have a chance of getting to safety anymore. Minions are 200 points behind ELCO, and therefore 550 points behind safety, despite a pretty good TdF. And Binance are even another 250 points further down, with their strategy of getting ageing leaders simply not working out at all.
So, we seem to have 7 teams fighting for the 3 podium spots (with 2 prime candidates for the win), the Top 10 teams being basically sealed, and at least 8 teams fighting against relegation. What else do we need for the final months?
Surprise, surprise - Silvio Herklotz no longer stands far above the rest! In fact, he doesn't even stand on top anymore, as that spot now belongs to Tour de France Winner Pierre-Henri Lecuisinier! The Frenchman has just rounded off his 2023 campaign with his second win in the biggest race, and ends his season with 2,117 points, jumping from 41st to the top. Will that even be enough to win the individual standings?
No, it definitely won't. Because Taylor Phinney, moving up from 18th to 2nd, is just 1 tiny point behind - and the American still has 3 RDs left! As long as he doesn't go to a PTHC event - which he most certainly won't - he'll score at least 5 points and will leave PHL behind. But could the American win the individual standings for a final time, for a 4th time in a row?
It will come down to a battle between him and Silvio Herklotz. The German currently trails the American by 34 points. We don't know yet were these two will spend their final RDs, but it would actually be great to have them in Lombardia... In any case, the Top 3 seem to be set in stone - or not?
Tom Wirtgen in 4th place could at least try to join them. He currently totals 1,651 points, but has 7 RDs left. Spending them in Deutschland and Herbiers seems most likely, but in both cases he might face Würtz, so getting more than 450 points to even win the individual standings looks unlikely.
What about Lukasz Wisniowski then? The Pole trails Wirtgen by 54 points, and the leader by 520 points - but with East Midlands, Arenberg, Rheden and especially Northern Europe still pending, it's not completely impossible to actually get there!
Joseph Dombrowski has dropped from 2nd to 6th, still with 1,518 points; he should have one more race to do and won't gain lots of spots with that. The same is true for Merhawi Kudus, who fell from 3rd to 7th, totalling 1,441 points.
In 8th place, we find the most notable improver of the period - Egan Bernal, jumping up from 79th to 8th after scoring 1,087 points in June and July! 1,342 points is a good achievement for him as he's done with his 2023 season, too.
Jack Haig dropped from 8th to 9th despite a great Tour de Suisse. With 1,153 points, he trails Bernal by 189 points already, and only has 2 RDs left to improve his total score.
David Per on the other hand should have some additional options left, and might actually revert the drop from 6th to 10th he just suffered. In any case, a Top 10 finish seems pretty likely for him.
With 3 new riders joining the Top 10 - thereof two really impressive improvers with PHL and Bernal - the same number of riders also dropped out of the top positions. Gidich lost 4 spots and now is 14th, Polanc dropped from 7th to 15th, and Lutsenko even lost 16 spots to fall from 9th to 25th.
Besides PHL and Bernal, we can mention Yates (59 -> 12), Pogacar (84 -> 18) and Barguil (78 -> 21) as most notable improvers. This may have been a bit easier in this update, given that we summarized two months, but these are still impressive achievements!
Now, the PT mountains are pretty much over for 2023, with Lombardia being the most mountainous race left. Up to the sprinters, puncheurs and TTers to take over - especially the sprinters might be eager to do so, with none of them in the current Top 10!
Wow, what a monster update! Love your work Fabianski.
Some very interesting battles left up and down the rankings, will be a very interesting title fight - Aker is a team I have loved for a while and this season with their depth of great scorers, but obviously have to be rooting for Evonik's first title at long last would be a brilliant thing. Either way will be a deserved winner and probably a very interesting fight looking at the remaining races for both.
24/02/21 - kandesbunzler said “I don't drink famous people."
15/08/22 - SotD said "Your [jandal's] humour is overrated"
11/06/24 - knockout said "Winning is fine I guess. Truth be told this felt completely unimportant." [PT] Xero Racing
Thank you so much for the update Fabianski! Fantastic read after a lot of intense racing.
It's a surprisingly good update for us despite some of the component parts not feeling so great at the time. Our strategy of being competitive on almost every terrain has prevented us from having real blowups, and we're often scoring middle of the pack in races that feel like duds thanks to the depth scoring system of PT.
So, looking at the past two months, Franceville and Philadelphia were obviously great for us from a points/expectations perspective. But Dauphine ended up being great for us too thanks to Gregaard, and even the Tour wasn't terrible in the end. We lose ground on the "winners" of those races, but not the majority of our competitors.
So, we're in 12th now, over 600 points clear of relegation and with a good amount of teams in between. All GT's done, and just a couple more months of smaller races remaining. Looking at the schedule, it's not ideal, but not terrible. The TT races will hurt us for sure, and we can't expect too much from AKA in his leadership races, they're just a tossup. But Per also has a bunch of leadership races left, and he's been remarkably consistent this year. Over 1000 points already. A lot of teams below us will necessarily lose points against him, and that means they have to make them up elsewhere.
I'm starting to like our chances, but I'm not getting ahead of myself. If we get through August in a similar position, our survival mission might actually be looking real.
RIP Exxon Duke, David Veilleux, Double Feature, and Monster Energy
It feels like a very good two months, at least relative to previous, so I'm glad we are getting close to achieving our goal: not finishing last
We are somewhat closing the gap to the teams above but not by enough. Survival will be a miracle. Some more exciting battles to look forward to for that positions as well as at the top of the leaderboard.
As Fab's numbers show, this was an awesome period for us. We used up lots of RDs and really leaned into our main duo of Pogacar and Geoghegan Hart, but the return is outstanding!
The only race where we didn't perform was Philly, which is where we obviously didn't have those two. Otherwise 200+ pts in each race. Scandinavia and Le Tour is where we really got the big scoring with the points scale much higher.
Pogi finishes his season with a very good total of 955 pts, but many of them were from U25s, so realistically his output is lower which is something to think about for next season.
TGH has also proved to be well worth spending big in FA and further investing in his training. He's also been able to profit from our improved TT core this season. Again something to look at for next season.
Lammertink has been great all season with two good scoring races still remaining for him. But for this update I wanna give a mention to Habtemichael who's really gotten us a bunch of under the radar results. In the top 100 right now with 330 pts, he has really turned around his season to give us the added stage racing depth
I'm not sure about being secure for the top 10 quite yet, would like to see us perform up to par in August before I say that. And I don't think we'll really fight Puma or Gazelle for a top 5 finish. But we do have a top 10 sponsor goal, so we should go for that, having come so far already.
Another brilliant write up, Fabianski!
Looks like it will be a fun title race between Evonik and Aker
Gigantic ranking update - love it! Thanks so much for your work once again!
Obviously a big jump for me and we are now in title contention territory. Should be a very interesting fight up top with at least Aker and Evonik having lots of good races left. The big quesion probably is whether Lopez or Wisniowski can be more dominant in their races.
I think the potential key races for Aker vs us might be ToNE and Riga + Moscow as potentially the biggest swing races if Kragh Andersen / Wisniowski can deliver big in one of the classics and ToNE with its unpredictability and as a race where Polanc could deliver hugely too.
I havent looked into the other teams path forward yet but my gut feeling says that EA might be the most dangerous one for us. Between Wirtgen, Van der Lijke and Valter there is some nice coverage for several races. But they already have a bit of a gap to overcome
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Its interesting how the bottom of the table looks like four teams already look like they will have a very tough time to overcome the small gap to safety while lots of teams will still feel unsafe
Well we are obviously going down. Our TT/HI races doesn't work, and our two top sprinters doesn't work, and Koretzky stopped working. Then there's not much left tbh.
Atleast I have 1mio bound in wages that is easy to cut, when the sprinting department of the game doesn't work. Unfortunately it destroys the long term plan of being able to train my greek riders, and the project is defacto killed by a relegation this specific season.
A very tough period for us with how poor the Tour was. Hurt by the absolutely shocking scoring of Jakobsen in the sprints relative to much worse riders. Will really hurt if that's what sends us down.
On the plus side, scoring should improve for us in the final months. We're going to need some big performances but our riders are certainly capable!
Is this the moment where I can say "what did I say?"
On a more serious note, what an amazing run-in we'll have in the fight for the title! As the update says, seven points are within reach purely looking at the points standings. As knockout writes, some teams definitely have a better schedule compared to others thinking of the leaders. I'm not sure where we stand. Yeah, we have more race days left, but 7 of those are zero pointers, as the TT heavy PTHC bands will continue to cost us in the next month, having Deutschland Tour + the PT TT exhibition in France.
Except for that, we have 13 race days left for Wisniowski, only 2 one day races left for Kragh, and the same for Mohoric. When I'm writing, I must admit I don't fancy our chances, especially against Evonik. Guess we clash in Portugal, where we don't have Mohoric, and we'll need both stage results and a GC result from Amezawa. Unfortunately, there's not much this season giving us hints of him being able to deliver us that, but who knows. It would be amazing if we can give it a proper fight all the way to the line
And speaking of tight fights, what a thriller it is to avoid relegation as well. Curious to see if ISA can continue their good Slovenia form and build momentum to close the gap. Grieg have some good Würtz races left. Don't dare to make any guesses there!
Thanks for the update Fabianski! Appreciate it, must have taken quite some time.
Still in the relegation zone, but a fairly good update for us. Scoring quite good in the TdF (considering how our squad is built) and then a couple of top results in Franceville and Slovenia. Especially considering we had a low amount of races days in this update, we have to be happy with our scoring. Pprd wise we are also above the relegation zone, so we just have to trust that our main guys can deliver at their best. Certainly several good races left for both Pedersen and Würtz, so fingers crossed that they can deliver and perhaps some of the rest can suprise here or there.
Looks like we'll have an intense fight for both the top spots and to avoid relegation, so we're all set for some good racing in the last few months of the season!
What an awesome read, even für people outside the game. Loving the stories of Cedevita and Evonik. Even if theyre not the favorites to win it all from here, it would be perfect if they can finally get it done and take the crown!
A strong couple of months for the team, which were much needed given the fact we were right in the relegation battle pre-Tour. Hopefully the TT races in August aren't too unkind to us and we can continue to have some good fortune on the cobbles, and then fears of relegation can wait for another season!
Amazing update Fab! Really do appreciate the work creating this bumper update.
As for us, its really interesting/funny that after having a solid period during June/July and winning a race + top 3 scoring in the TDF I was expecting to maybe move up the table. Instead we stay exactly 10th and kind of fall away from the teams in front.
Doesn't bother me too much though, the top is very competitive and a top 10 meets our goals for the year so would be a success, although we can't take things for granted looking at our scoring in future races.
John St Ledger in Team Bunzl-Centrica and Team U25
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