The 2nd month of the year showcases even more races for our PCT teams with 10 different scoring opportunities across February. It was heavy on the cobbles, but there were also opportunities in a C2 Grand Tour, a TTT, and the hills. Let’s take a look at those 10 races.
Omloop headed us off this month and it was a surprise victor when Lukas Spengler took the victory for Bacharu Mamachari Faito! Some depth points push the Japanese team to 150 points as the best team in the first Belgian classic of the month. Bianchi Enel took 2nd in the race standings with 108 after also taking 2nd in the race with Stavrakakis.
Only a few teams took place in the C2 race Coppa Piacci, but three ended up with more than a goose egg. Lierse SK-Pizza Ullo earned the top score of the division with 19 thanks to Alessandro Covi. Jumping a few races further down the calendar, Vuelta a Tachira only had one scoring team and it’s Sauber Petronas Racing who is a perennial attendee in Colombia. They earn a whopping 9 points for an even 1PPRD at the first grand tour of the year.
Back to the cobbles (and chronology of the month), Roma Maxima is one of the more unique races on the calendar. 4 teams managed over 100points being lead by Trans Looney Tunes! The Tunes crew had 4 in the top 25 led by Giorgi Tediashvili – combined earning the team 171 points. Grieg-Maersk followed in 2nd with 113 while Bianchi Enel and Bralirwa-Cegeka took 103 and 102 respectively. It was a relatively solo effort for Bralirwa while Bianchi found 3 in the top 21.
From the PTHC Italian race to the spectacular C1 Portuguese classic Viano do Castelo, the early portion of February was a wonder of special cobble classics. No one managed 100 points on the Portuguese climbs, but it’s no surprise to see Grieg-Maersk taking the top score with 90 points. It wasn’t the Per show this time either, as Ssabagwanya lead the way of 4 in the top 16. Bianchi Enel was the other major victor here as they took the race with with MVDP and 80 points for their promotion run.
The meat of this month was the standard cobble races re-starting with KBK and you’ve heard the teams associated with this race already this rankings. Bralirwa-Cegeka takes the race win with 150 points and Grieg-Maersk finds 2nd in 105. Tryg-Eni 3rd just under a 100 points as a sign of their cobble month to come.
Heading to Britain brings us the biggest point opportunity of the month with Cheshire Cycling Tour and it’s the 3 teams just mentioned above taking the lead. Grieg-Maersk of course leads with Per’s fantastic performance alongside two other top 20 results. Ovsyannikov represented well again for Tryg-Eni who take 2nd place in the team rankings at 268. Bralirwa-Cegeka takes the 3rd spot again with 224 with all 3 having a major gap to 4th (Sauber at 150).
3 final races to end the month with Le Samyn, Gent-Wevelgem, and the TTT Classic in Olympia. Grieg-Maersk wins the Le Samyn scoring (obviously) with their 140 points and Bralirwa-Cegeka holding strong with 103. Moving to the TTT, Riders of Rohan finally adds another team to the highlights with 100 points for taking the victory. Philips-Hero second here. And in the CT classic, Jura Giants found a win with Sommer so it’s 50 points for the Swiss, but Lotto-Caloi stacked the results and gave them a huge run for their money with 43 points.
Team
Feb
Omloop
Placci
Roma
Castelo
Tachira
KBK
Cheshire
Samyn
Olympia
GW
Grieg-Maersk
955
78
0
113
90
0
105
421
140
0
8
Bralirwa - Cegeka
668
61
0
102
28
0
150
224
103
0
0
Tryg - Eni
529
82
0
0
0
0
98
268
31
50
0
Bianchi Enel
453
108
0
103
80
0
0
98
38
15
11
Bacharu Mamachari Faito!
333
150
0
0
4
0
50
129
0
0
0
Sauber Petronas Racing
315
28
0
0
22
9
36
150
32
5
33
Trans Looney Tunes
262
31
0
171
0
0
0
0
60
0
0
Jura GIANTS
240
5
0
0
0
0
10
88
87
0
50
Peugeot
236
70
12
72
0
0
82
0
0
0
0
Philips - Hero
207
45
0
0
0
0
53
24
20
65
0
Duvel - Tsingtao
196
10
0
17
46
0
10
47
66
0
0
Team UBS - EDP
147
38
0
0
0
0
33
6
70
0
0
Lierse SK - Pizza Ullo PCTeam
140
12
19
0
24
0
43
0
12
30
0
Everesting
126
11
7
49
0
0
22
0
37
0
0
Riders of Rohan
124
18
0
0
0
0
6
0
0
100
0
Zwift - Newton Foundation
102
0
0
0
56
0
0
4
7
35
0
Lotto-Caloi
100
0
0
4
0
0
0
0
8
45
43
Minions
74
0
0
4
0
0
0
68
0
0
2
Gjensidige Pro Cycling Team
55
9
0
0
0
0
15
0
6
25
0
McCormick Pro Cycling
43
0
0
0
31
0
0
0
9
0
3
SparkNZ - Liquigas Pro Cycling
2
0
0
2
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
Ethiopian Airlines
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
Full Rankings
Starting from the overall bottom of the overall rankings, McCormick Pro Cycling and Gjensidige Pro Cycling Team are tied with 165 points having each used more than 25 race days. Neither team would’ve picked February as a crucial month for their campaigns, but both clearly need to pick it up in order to stay up this year.
Riders of Rohan are also low on the scoreboard with 182, but February was a much stronger month than January, pretty much all reliant on the TTT. They’ll need that squad to continue firing on all cylinders.
SparkNZ – Liquigas fought well in January, but this simply wasn’t the month for the Kiwis. Only 2 points total across the month means there must be more to come. A 70 point gap stands between them and Duvel-Tsingtao, the final team in relegation position after 1/5 of the season. A sufficient month for the Chinese/Belgian crossover will still need more improvement to move out of the relegation zone.
Everesting seems to love the lower teens in the PCT rankings and they sit 17th overall just ahead of Duvel-Tsingtao. It’s 284 points total for to remain ahead of the relegation line. They’re also the lowest team on the ranking to have over 100 points in both months. Not sure whether it’s good or bad to have a steady flow of points, but without a spike.
1 point separates Lotto-Caloi from Jura GIANTS, but both want to move out of the low 300s. A single point also separates the two teams above them with Lierse SK- Pizza Ullo managing to edge ahead of Zwift – Newton Foundation. Of these four teams, all but Jura had better January’s than February. Zwift also an outlier as they spent time terrorizing the PT calendar without any impact here.
The men in overalls, more formally Minions, took a slow February but still benefit off their January scoring. When you check the PpRD, this team needs to find a few more each time they take the startline, as no one above them has a lower point per race day.
Philips – Hero starts the top half of the rankings and signals the start of teams with a strong first two months. Philips – Hero takes the ranking as first team over 200 in both months and the 2nd lowest RD total of all teams. Looking at projections alone push this team closer to the top 5, than simply sitting in 11th.
Ethiopian Airlines gained a huge 0 points in February which is another sign of how important Ewan is for the African team. Still, their January keeps them in the top 10. Team UBS-EDP was also highlighted in January and fell down the rankings this month. Still, they manage to hold their own and maintain a top 10. Bacharu Mamachari Faito! Represents an opposite schedule where January was sufficient, but worth major highlighting in February.
7th place is Sauber Petronas Racing! They’ve put a ton of race days out there already this year, but points in the bank are always worth it. Still, they would prefer you not re-sort by projection. 515 points total means the gap above is much higher than the gap below.
6th was last year’s CT champions Bianchi Enel as they battle for double promotion. The 4th best February pushes this team up to the first disband promotion slot. 3rd most race days completed though.
Heading to promotion territory, Peugeot managed to nickel and dime their way to 236 points in February and 721 total! The car company took their foot off the gas compared to January, but they’re still flying down the highway toward a promotion run and a very strong projection. They battle with Tryg-Eni for 4th, just 57 points behind. Ovsyannikov was the important figure this month and should look forward to more strong scoring in the future.
Last month’s 1st place team falls to 3rd because of the huge months from the top two. In 3rd is of course Trans Looney Tunes who found a few very strong results, but didn’t take on quite as many RD this month as the first two teams did.
Grieg-Maersk had almost as strong a month as you could possibly have, gaining a whopping 955 points in February. Sadly, with only 40 points in January, they haven’t quite eclipsed the 1000 point mark yet. Per can only demolish the division in so many races, but what he’s done so far puts this team at the highest PpRD of the division.
Now Bralirwa-Cegeka couldn’t win February, even with how strong Girmay was. Still, their 668 is worth more than enough to push the team to 1st overall. 1074 points total makes them the first and only team over the thousand barrier. 3rd in the projections also suggests that they’ll remain a promotion and title contender for the entirety of the year.
We’ve got a new leader! Not a surprise given Ewan did not compete in February, but David Per takes the big lead with 648 points, all from February.
It’s no surprise that the next two are also the big guns from the cobble season as Biniam Girmay and Alexandr Ovsyannikov jump over the top sprinters of January.
The top 10 is joined by newcomers Lukas Spengler (and who would’ve guessed that heading into the year), Jonas Rutsch, and Giorgi Tediashvili.
Looking at the teams for the top 20, Trans Looney Tunes manages 3 in the top 11, while Tryg-Eni also features 2 in the top 10. Peugeot also sits 3 in the top 20, with Coquard in 15th probably the rider you’d most expect to stay in the top riders by end of season.
Once we get out of cobbles season I am sure we will see improvement in the amount of points we get. I am excited for that day as cobbles for us are not overly fun
Definitely happy with the month. 8th place when we only had 12 cobbled RDs - with a 76 and a 75 cobbler - is way better than expected. We got a 20 PpRD average this month - clearly not something we were asking for. But Stewart and Sommer were amazing!
We're still very far down in the rankings, but given that all of Schmid, Godoy, Bissegger and Darbellay are yet to start their season, it's not as bad as it could seem. Strade Bianche and Norway will be crucial races for Schmid and Bissegger respectively, while Paez gets both Izola and Britain next month. So there's some hope we could continue our rise
Congrats to Grieg on an awesome month, and to Bralirwa on taking the lead - I can't really see anyone who could threaten the latter at the top
February was never going to be our month with Viano, where we OK, the only race with a serious team. But oof that January. Good news is over half of cobbled race days are done. Colombia needs to mark the beginning of a rise up the rankings.
Ok, pprd may not favour us, but we've already had most of our C2 race days and we still haven't seen Hirschi start his season so sitting in 7th feels like a minor miracle at this stage.
Rossi and Nommela have split the cobbles leadership well so far and Einhorn has done his bit in the sprints so far to give us 3 in the top 30 before our starboy and his super strong team even turn a wheel.
Imagine where we'd be if we didn't blank both Samyn and GW at the end of the month! This should have been a brilliant February that catapulted us forwards, but it fell off hard. We still come out ahead, but a decent chunk off where we should have been.
Still, the cobbles is working to establish a strong base. Our PPrD is still good. Fingers crossed the GC unit can find similar successes and maintain an outside promotion shot.
The hit was expected as we raced nothing but cobbles this month. Next month we might have a better overview of what our actual position is. Thanks for the update
So far, so good. 2nd best cobbles rider behind Per was always the most likely outcome for Bini and barring like a catastrophic Benelux Challenge later in the year, he should be well on pace for that 750-800 points that I was expecting/hoping for.
We obviously have a lot of race days spent already, and some of the most valuable ones, too. But contrary to the Stallaert years, we should fall off much less from this point. And the gap we've opened now to some of the other promotion contenders like UBS, Zwift or Jura should sustain us through some less fortunate races.
Overall, I think Sauber and Trans are the positive surprises at this point. Bacharu Mamachari Faito! also in a great place imo, while Lierse suffers from Gamper being, to me at least, probably the biggest underperformer of the month.
Looking forward to see how the standings take shape after the stage racers and especially the puncheurs enter the picture. Thank you for the great update sean!
Very happy being at 5th here. We score consistently in every race we race and that is perfect. Most likely we could've had a better February if we had chosen different HC and PTHC bands, but it is how it is and we didn't really plan for Rutsch. We are promotion contenders with these PPRD and will hopefully continue on that path
Going into March it will be another month with no racing from Ranaweera. Our first race will be Izola as C2 with Wirtgen again our hope before we will see if APP can do better with im racing both Tour of Norway and Tour of Britain this month.
Rutsch will lead in Lillestrom (I'm born 5 min from Lillestrøm) while we will have Coquard for the sprints in Britain and Zabel for the sprints in Norway
Only these 4 races so another kinda slow month for us. Hopefully we will continue getting good results. Hope that APP can step up this month
Complete nothing month from us. 0 points from 8 RDs obviously less than ideal, although none of those races were races we chose, or where we would have realistically expected a score. Glad to have had a big cushion from January, but this feels like the beginning of a big slide for us.
Very happy with our points total so far. The battle against relegation will take clearer shape over the coming months, but for now, we are focusing on our own performances.
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