The Tour of America was the major event of this month and consequently, 8 of the Top 10 teams scored big points there, Kraftwerk Man Machine obviously chief among them. It's then even more impressive that Team UBS managed to get to second place of this period without participating in CT's very own Grand Tour, but big points in the Arab Tour, the Balkans International and the Rheden GP allowed them to do just that.
Cedevita in 3rd and Duolingo in 6th place of the month really helped themselves in the promotion race, while Carrefour - ESPN and Indosat Ooredoo made strides in the relegation battle. In contrast, Bralirwa - Stevens, Popo4Ever p/b Nemiroff and Binance Cycling's promotion ambitions took big hits, Podium Ambition took another step towards CT and Assa Abloy and especially Red Bull Zalgiris, who had a particularly rough period on admittedly few race days, entrench themselves in midfield with low scoring showings.
P-T
Kig
Ara
ToA
Bal
Eus
Bat
Rhe
M-T
Lug
Tot
1
Kraftwerk Man Machine
37
0
78
617
0
0
0
0
0
42
774
2
Team UBS
0
18
196
0
255
0
0
102
16
48
635
3
Cedevita
15
0
0
165
241
21
0
10
52
0
504
4
Carrefour - ESPN
0
0
0
230
53
0
0
117
0
80
480
5
Indosat Ooredoo
0
0
123
255
87
0
0
0
13
0
478
6
Duolingo
11
0
113
250
0
10
0
0
0
67
451
7
Lierse SK - Pizza Ullo PCTeam
0
18
80
168
66
0
0
52
56
0
440
8
Aker - MOT
20
12
0
0
221
3
0
55
84
41
436
9
Carlsberg - Danske Bank
0
0
0
198
142
0
72
16
0
0
428
10
Project: Africa
0
0
158
239
0
0
0
0
0
0
397
11
Polar
26
0
272
0
0
26
7
0
2
0
333
12
Los Pollos Hermanos
0
0
322
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
322
13
cycleYorkshire
0
0
272
0
0
0
2
0
28
0
302
14
Voyagin - Bird
0
0
8
71
103
0
2
70
41
0
295
15
Eurosport x GCN
0
0
30
178
0
0
39
0
0
5
252
16
Tryg - Ritter Sport
0
0
13
90
44
0
0
0
10
14
171
17
Philips - Force India
10
1
0
0
88
6
22
13
20
0
160
18
Jura - Fiat
42
0
59
0
50
0
0
2
0
4
157
19
Minions
0
39
21
0
0
0
54
0
32
0
146
20
Sauber Petronas Racing
0
0
42
99
0
0
0
0
0
2
143
21
Podium Ambition
0
0
33
40
0
0
56
0
0
0
129
22
Bralirwa - Stevens
16
14
98
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
128
23
Team Popo4Ever p/b Nemiroff
0
0
0
0
61
10
0
4
7
24
106
24
Assa Abloy
16
0
0
0
44
0
0
42
0
0
102
25
Binance Cycling
0
0
37
0
0
0
0
0
0
62
99
26
Red Bull Zalgiris
0
0
0
0
19
0
0
19
0
0
38
Full Ranking
Following another very solid month, Aker - MOT seems to have first place all but locked up. Los Pollos Hermanos continue their great streak, moving up a spot despite only spending 7 race days thanks to the second highest single race points total (after Kraftwerk's ToA) in the Arab Tour. Those two as well as Polar and Duolingo, thanks to their comparably high remaining race days, look pretty well for promotion, even if nothing is secured yet.
cycleYorkshire and Team Popo4Ever can still optimistically dream PT dreams, especially if we assume that 6th place may be enough for promotion. They both have more than 200 points on 7th placed Team UBS, but with only 4 and 2 race days left, respectively, they're mostly left on the sidelines hoping their rivals don't score too well.
Those rivals include Team UBS, this month's big winner inside the Top 10, Bralirwa - Stevens, who continue to tumple after another weak month, and Cedevita. All of them still have a fair amount of race days left to close that 200-300 point gap to the Top 5 and will be looking to do so. Binance Cycling on the other hand likely has too few race days left to make a jump, while Kraftwerk Man Machine, despite an incredible month, might be too far behind.
Looking at the bottom, as mentioned before, Indosat Ooredoo is this month's biggest winner in the relegation race, moving from 24th all the way up to 20th and out of the relegation zone. They're still far from safe though, and neither are Sauber Petronas Racing and arguably Jura - Fiat, although the Swiss team has a couple more race days in hand. Still, only just over 100 points seperate them from Carrefour in 22nd, the first relegation spot.
It's still a testament to Carrefour's great month that they can even dream of safety, having been second-to-last in the previous ranking. They only trail Philips - Force India by a mere 8 points now! Behind them, Podium Ambition have slipped into the relegation zone as their manager has long predicted. And while both they and Voyagin - Bird are less than 70 points removed from safety, neither have a lot of race days to make that happen. Looking one more step downwards, we'll very likely have to conclude that Tryg - Ritter Sport will join Eurosport x GCN as being locked into the bottom 5. Miracles might yet happen, but they certainly need one.
The Tour of America gives us our most eye-catching change in the individual ranking, with Dominik Nerz rising a whopping 86 places all the way up to 24. Michal Kwiatkowski from 7 to 4, Marlen Zmorka from 11 to 5, Leigh Howard from 21 to 13 and Tomohiro Kinoshita from 41 to 25 are other names climbing up the ranking. The Top 3 meanwhile remain unchanged - although Beltran is much closer to the Top 2 now -, it will be interesting to see if someone can still break up that podium to claim a spot for himself.
Want to sum-up the T3A season?
The 600k Caleb Ewan is on course to miss the Top30 in ranking, a feat he's not managed since he was an unmaxed rider. The Worst Training Spend in Altur continues to extend this claim, on course to fall outside the Top100!
Yet we are still withing range of safety. If only we weren't mostly a team of neo-pros! Frankly despite the individual performance of our "leaders" this is still somehow a positive season. Becuase f*ck me if this team makes any sense, still...
Wow. We don't have any big races coming up anymore (or at least points-wise), but promotion is really looking like a very big possibility now. Great second half of the season by Manninen, superb final weeks by Zmorka, solid racing by Spilak in general and guys like Maksimov, Sterbini and fucking Quispe also scoring some great depth points. Time to bring it home!
I believe the podium will be Aker, Duolingo and Polar (with Aker winning the title, congrats in advance), and then I expect UBS and Cedevita to still score very big and finish ahead of us as well. As long as McCarthy doesn't overperform we should hopefully be able to just keep Yorkshire below us, but it could be very close. Good luck to everyone in the final two weeks of the season, and thanks for the update to cunego!
That honestly still looks better than expected. Our last few races were really bad, and except for P-T and maybe Arab Tour, we didn't have any good results. As expected, ToA made the gap to the bottom spots melt away - but we somehow still gained a spot. And now it's us who have the most RDs remaining.
However, 8 of those are in Morocco - and we haven't done well in PTHC races so far. Vilnius should get us a couple of points no matter what, but it may come down to Emelia in the end... So we'll have to hope for some outstanding performance in Morocco, probably from some breakaways...
Congrats to Kraftwerk on another fantastic ToA, and to Aker on the very likely title along with promotion! And it definitely looks great for LPH for back-to-back promotions, well done
Great to see how well our friends in Aker have done this season. It looks all set for a promotion, so hopefully they can keep themselves at the top all the way till the end of the season.
Great update for us! Promotion is definitely safe, and it also looks very promising for the title. We eight PTHC days in Maroc which I'm not too hopeful about, but other than that, we should be able to bring in enough points to secure the title.
The battle for the promotion spots, but also to avoid relegation, looks tense, which is great! As a neutral regarding those fights, I can understand that all teams involved would want to be safe before the very last races, but I must admit I hope for the opposite, with the battle going back and forward all the way until the very last races.
Better than expected in Balkans, worse than expected ToA.
Top 15 is in serious jeopardy now, considering our remaining calendar is hills heavy. Will need a great Maroc to reach that goal now. And we need a great Maroc anyway, since that was also a top 5 goal we have little chance of achieving.
We had a phenomenal first few months of the year, but we really slowed down, and at this point, we're below expectations of most of the predictions. When you consider how much AKA overperformed, it really shows just how horrendous most of our depth was.
RIP Exxon Duke, David Veilleux, Double Feature, and Monster Energy
Pedro Miguel Paulinho. Gianni Moscon. Bruno Borges.
Not bad puncheurs by any means, but genuinely better than Skujins? In a reasonable world there wouldn't be a chance in high heaven.
He's only managed to salvage a single Top 5 and a single Top 10, joined by a sole stage win at Tour of South Africa. I can't make sense of it; he is usually considered a favourite by the game, and riders with similar stat profiles actually perform not half bad. It certainly isn't due to lack of support: Hoelgaard managed a Top 10 GC in the Basque Country and Smirnovs a stage win in Poland. They aren't top level riders, but they ought to be adequate.
I spent more than €2M on Skujins, and traded away Cort Nielsen and Lunke -- excellent depth pieces and potential Top 10 runners for the Tour of America. I thought at the time that I had overspent, now I know that if Altur might be worst spend in the PCT this season, Skujins must come in at least second.
Just relegate us PCM! Don't need it to be this close and then lose out on the final day, because I can all my PCM$ that's what is going happen.
Can't see us keeping all of Carrefour, Podium Ambition, Voyagin and Tryg behind us given we are in Maroc and in two other hilly classics with Mr. Puncher Extraordinaire. He's getting worse every season. Should've just sold him when I got the chance last time we went down.
Glad to be out of the bottom 5 for now. Expected a much better point haul in ToA to put us that bit closer to safety, but here’s hoping it has done enough. It’s so ridiculously close at the bottom that the bottom 9 could finish in any order and it wouldn’t be a surprise. Luckily we avoid Maroc as it would have been a waste of RD, and have some decent scoring opportunities still ahead. I’ve actually been doing all my planning (if you can call it that) for being in the CT next season so if we do stay up we may need to reinvent the wheel to have a chance in hell of repeating the feat next season
I do feel bad for and hope for the safety of sauber - doing so well at the last update and probably would have been pretty much safe if Ranaweera decided to turn up to ToA.
So we would actually have had a good chance of promotion if it wasn't for the shitty race known as Tour of America?
I think we'll get close in our remaining races, but at the end it won't be enough and I'll just have to pay all my riders for an excellent season, but stay on the PCT payroll
Which in the end is still way more than I expected. I thought we were gonna battle relegation, but we're somehow on the other end of the table. How? Well for the 1st time we have some good depth coming from the likes of Gaudu, Pogacar, Gilanipoor, Penko and even Zordan! That alone is probably enough to keep us safe.
Of course I didn't predict Beltran would be back at his very best with the depth in the hills this season. Scoring 40% of our total points still shows how much we depend on him. He looks to have a decent chance of actually winning the individual rankings. Something that will hurt come renewals, but would add to his legendary status in our team
Congrats to the teams at the top that have all but clinched promotion and thanks for the update Cunego
Another rather poor month for us. Silvestre should have scored around 100 points more between Paris Tours and Arab Tour, but looking at the individual rankings, you really can't ask for more than him being the second best sprinter of the division. I think Cedevita will still pass us, but we should have a good chance of staying in the Top 10, which honestly is a phenomenal outcome.
Very very close races for promotion and relegation, that's going to be super intense to follow. Just two more weeks to go ...
Very very close in both ends of the spectrum, and a lot can still happen.
Looks like it will be a lot of familiar faces that will go up to the Pro Tour - which could make it a very very strong Pro Tour next season.
I am still crossing my fingers for Bralirwa to promote as I think they have played an almost perfect season from a manegerial point of view. I would also love to see Cedevita find a lot of points in the final dash, but the gap seems a little bit too big unless some extra spots free up at the PT (which might happen, depending on how many teams are to compete at that division in the future).
Red Bull has made a complete full stop, which is unfortunate, as they actually was in a very good position to target promotion at one point.
I almost can't bare to see Carrefour relegate once more, so I am very much crossing my fingers that they can keep the sprint going for the final race(s). Some very solid teams are going down regardless of who performs in the end though.
Another great ToA (thanks for the thanks) sees Kraftwerk up to 11th, one off our top 10 goal that I had written off. Sent a strong team to Maroc but I don't think it will be strong enough.
Thanks for the update cunego and good luck to everyone in the promo and relegation battles, hope riders live up to their billing.
Well all of a sudden we are promotion contenders.Didn't actually believe that up to this point. Adding more depth to the team seems to be paying off, especially with Gesinks's decline.
Thanks for another update cunego. Looking forward to the battles ahead!
Unfortunately we had a poor TOA as Ranaweera just couldn't perform to expectations so we have fallen closer to the relegation zone than we've ever been this season.
Hopefully that is going to be a one off performance form our team and not a trend that continues towards the end of the season.
