Welcome to the Head Quarters of Kraftwerk Man Machine Cycling Team riding in CT Daily's Management Game 2025 Season.
Kraftwerk relegated from PCT in 2024, finishing 22nd after a failed attempt to rebuild the squad.
Fortunately for the team long term sponsors, Kraftwerk and Trivago, are back for another year of sponsorship and we will be riding in the same iconic shirt.
Kraftwerk Man Machine are based in Dusseldorf riding on a German licence. The team is comprised of an international squad to reflect the international appeal of Kraftwerk's music, although Germany will always be the best represented nation.
Concept and Icon
The Kraftwerk Man Machine team name is taken from Kraftwerk's 1978 album The Man Machine. The concept of the Man Machine is of humans, technology and nature combined in harmony with the Rider, Bicycle and Parcours being a prime example. The youtube link is the record label version of The Man Machine. https://www.youtu...HIsGqJaXXw
Renewals
With a big drop in budget, who from the squad will understand the new reality, accept a lower wage, and stay in the team?
The table features race leaders and the race days per month including an assessment of point scoring potential.
March and June should be our best months, August & September not so good. To win the division it looks like we will need a healthy lead by the end of July.
Goal races are highlighted in Red and we have a Goal to win the CT division.
I felt like you were postponing a much needed rebuild for a while now. I guess now you are mostly forced into it. CT might be a quite fun and lively division this upcoming season so good luck in your attempt to bounce back to PCT
Will be very interesting to see what you do. With your starting point you should be one of the favorites for promotion. Great to see a rider like Zabel still around and for a German team.
You got some riders that might fit well in my future plans aswell, don't know if I want you to release them or if I want to have a shot at buying them
Thanks for the encouragement, I did consider giving up but I found myself thinking about developing my talents and realised it was too early, if Ralf Hütter can still tour at 78 years of age I can do a little bit of man game managing.
@UU The shirt is the best thing about the team
@Abhi Hoping to have a more interesting season at least
@kb Can an old dog learn some new tricks?
@red After the initial disappointment I am looking forward to CT racing
@Heine Great to have you back and I am always open to talks
@Laurens Its a tricky one, is a rebuild easier with a bigger budget next year if we promote, but with a declining squad?
Really sad to see that Masnada wasn't able to help you stay up. But if you can manage to keep him, I'm sure he'll do great in CT, as he did for me three years ago (ending up 6th overall)!
Developing some talents sounds like a longer term strategy, so hopefully you'll bounce back and stay around for quite some more years - I guess doing a "little bit of man game managing" is still possible at 80+ years
All the best for transfers & the upcoming season!
RENEWALS UPDATE (if the site stays up long enough)
Kraftwerk riders had a bruising time with a hard nosed Kraftwerk manager during renewals following our relegation to CT. Targets for renewals were:-
1. Retain Zabel and Masnada
2. Retain TTT capability
3. Retain Talents
4. Stay within budget
Nearly all riders took large pay cuts which meant we could achieve all our targets and keep Walscheid, Gall and Evans, a very promising result. Of the riders renewed we made a wage saving of 350k €. On the budget thing a project I have worked on for 5 years has just gone live after woefully inadequate testing (JFDI) and I may not have loads of time for a busy transfers so I was playing it safe.
Of course quite a few riders were released. Of these Josip Rumac was the hardest to take as he has ridden with Kraftwerk for a lot of seasons.
Riders Released
Anthony Turgis
330,000 €
Josip Rumac
90,000 €
Jaime Roson
125,000 €
Jasper De Buyst
95,000 €
Nicolay Cherkasov
75,000 €
Lennard Hofstede
50,000 €
Dan McLay
55,000 €
Michel Koch
50,000 €
Tobias Ludvigsson
90,000 €
Alex Ariya Destribois
60,000 €
Matvey Zubov
50,000 €
Moritz Kretschy
10,000 €
Gunnar Dahl Olsen
10,000 €
1,090,000 €
The squad now looks like this, we have cap space for 4 stagiaires and 2 minimum wage riders which just gets us to the 15 minimum, so during transfers we will be looking for swap deals to keep our headcount legal.
Tough renewals for you, in particular Turgis could've been fun in CT. But fully understand that his wage requests weren't compatible with a CT budget.
Great to see Masnada renewed, and even for a moderatly lower wage - he should do a great job for you! And crazy to see that him and Walscheid already enters his final prime year, feels like I just signed them ^^
Maybe we can help for maxing your cobbles talent, will have to see how transfers go...
If you do keep Masnada and Zabel through transfers, you really should have no trouble going straight back up. Evans and Gall themselves would be decent leaders even without Masnada.
As a fellow CT manager I really think you should just let riders like Zabel, Masnada, Gall and Evans go and preferably pick up someone way worse. We don't want them here!
With only 140k available and at least 4 spots to fill will be interesting to see how you do it. Most likely you are going to have a very fun transfer season trying to figure it out! You have a great team to start with, just need to fill it out and you should be one of the biggest favorites for promotion
That top three must be a terrifying one for the rest of the CT. Interested how you move the pieces around slightly to fill the rest of the squad out, sure it will be a fun year for you guys and going back up with a solid base very quickly
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
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Clasico San Jose
Coppa Placci
Viana do Castelo
GP Yekaterinburg
Vuelta al Tachira
Gent - Wevelgem
GP Izola
GP Herning
Tour du Faso
Tour of the Middle East
Tour of Luxembourg
Isle of Man ITT
Tour of Vancouver
USA Pro Cycling Challenge
Torshavn GP
GP Plouay
Euskal Bizikleta
Uppsala Classic
Tour of San Luis
Gisborne GP
Tour of Japan
Baltic Chain Tour
