Yes, we are very late to do this review - and it's pretty obvious why we took so much time. Because it isn't fun to look back on your worst ever season.
It's easy to make such a claim, in particular when disappointment is high (despite relegation not being unexpected). But we do have some facts & figures confirming this feeling.
Team Ranking
Pos
Last
Team
Total
RD
PpRD
1
1
Evonik - ELKO
7558
180
41,99
2
2
EA Vesuvio
7335
180
40,75
3
3
Rabobank
7126
180
39,59
4
4
King Power
7011
180
38,95
5
5
Carlsberg - Danske Bank
6951
180
38,62
6
6
Tinkoff Team - La Datcha
6809
180
37,83
7
7
ELCO - ABEA
6726
180
37,37
8
9
Team Puma - SAP
6653
180
36,96
9
8
Indosat Ooredoo
6446
180
35,81
10
11
Xero Racing
6335
180
35,19
11
10
Fastned
6326
180
35,14
12
13
Aker - MOT
6120
180
34
13
12
cycleYorkshire
5992
180
33,29
14
14
Polar
5990
180
33,28
15
15
Cedevita
5852
180
32,51
16
18
Gazelle
5248
180
29,16
17
16
Los Pollos Hermanos
5231
180
29,06
18
17
Sony - Force India
5164
180
28,69
19
19
Team UBS
4897
180
27,21
20
20
Grieg-Maersk
4566
180
25,37
21
21
Lierse SK - Pizza Ullo Pro Cycling
4398
180
24,43
22
22
Jura GIANTS
3999
180
22,22
You probably all know this table. It hurts. We always knew relegation would be a risk this year. But we definitely didn't expect to end up dead last. Not even making 4,000 points, finishing almost 400 points behind the 2nd worst team, and 1,232 points behind safety.
Why is it our worst season ever? Simply because we never finished last before. We had a bad first season in CT, and we did relegate in our first PCT season. But we were never even close to taking the red lantern, and here we "won" that race by a mile. That hurts. Yes, we do have some explanations for this, but it's still awkward.
Sponsor Goals
Country
Race
Goal
Outcome
Team Standings
Win
22nd
Tour de France
Points
2nd
Ronde van Nederland
Win
6th
Liège - Bastogne - Liège
Top 10
18th
Giro di Lombardia
Top 10
13th
Another first here - it's the first time we failed every single goal. 0/5. Worst possible outcome.
The team standings goal was always there just to please the sponsors; we knew it wouldn't be realistic. To fail it in the worst possible way still isn't appreciated.
Kaden Groves actually did a decent job in his two goal races, failing to get back-to-back green jerseys in the TdF by just one spot (by quite a margin, though). The Ronde van Nederland was still pretty disappointing; according to our simulations, we were convinced that he could make it three GC wins in a row, but he didn't quite have the legs. 6th place is still rather respectable.
Mauro Schmid on the other hand wasn't as close. He was 5th in Lombardia last year; his 13th place this season just confirms how much worse he's with the new regulations. And in LBL, he never got close, being inattentive at the wrong moment just like in too many other races...
All in all, we have three more or less close misses, and two clear failures. We'll see how that will translate into our 2026 budget, but we're not looking forward to negotiations...
Wins
So far, we never scored less than 10 wins, counting all of stage wins, GC wins, classic wins and jerseys. This year however was really awful - just take a look at this diagram:
It's the 3rd consecutive low in terms of stage wins - getting 6 of them two years ago, 5 last year and only 4 in 2025. And that's it - no GC, no jersey, no classic. The previous low was 11 wins - now it's 4.
Furthermore, we failed to get even a single NC win, despite having promising contenders in quite some nations - including Switzerland, where Valentin Darbellay was the best climber on paper, but - once again - messed up with his positioning and paid for it... As a sidenote, at least Stefan Bissegger got a jersey, but that was as a loanee for Simba Cement...
There are still two positive things to note about the wins that we did get, though, so let's take a look at the details:
Wins
Valentin Darbellay
Giro d'Italia
Stage 14
Kaden Groves
Tour de France
Stage 7
Kaden Groves
Tour de France
Stage 21
Antoine Aebi
Vuelta a España
Stage 10
Fabio Christen
Tour de l'Avenir
Stage 4
Yes, you're right, there are 5 wins listed - but Avenir stage wins aren't part of the official team history (just like NCs). Still, Fabio Christen's stage win gives us some hope that he might be able to get some "actual" wins later in his career, even though we didn't opt for the straightforward sprinter path that might have been most promising in that respect...
And on the other hand, you may notice that the four "real" stage wins are all GT stage wins - we actually won a stage in every GT this year - just unfortunate we didn't make this a sponsor goal ^^ So the quality of the wins is good, just the quantity leaves quite a lot to be desired...
Nonetheless, we were - only just - able to reach a big milestone in terms of total wins - we'll talk about that in the history update post that will hopefully follow soon...
Points
Obviously, when you relegate, the thing that definitely lacks is points. We said it, we didn't even score 4,000 points. It was still enough to get the minimum expectation of 3,825 points - which we thought was pretty pessimistic, but it sadly turned out to be rather realistic this year...
But the following diagram clearly shows how much of a step back this year was compared to the previous season:
The overall score is just marginally higher than in our last PCT season (where we finished 2nd) - and the PpRD is even lower that it was back in 2023. This clearly confirms that we didn't perform at PT level (even though we fortunately didn't post the worst ever PT score...)
We won't look at every rider's achievements this year, as we just aren't in the mood (and don't have time) for doing so, but let's still look at a summary - and some more insights later on:
Rider
Expected
Actual
Outcome
Mauro Schmid
480
610
Completed
Kaden Groves
600
655
Completed
Valentin Darbellay
320
642
Completed
Gergely Szarka
250
72
Failed
Jake Stewart
185
176
Failed
Diego Agustin Ferreyra
170
173
Completed
Luis Fernando De La Cruz Chapulin
150
113
Failed
Jose Fernandes
170
173
Completed
Niklas Larsen
150
76
Failed
Teten Rohendi
150
83
Failed
Muhammad Abdurrahman
130
140
Completed
Lorenzo Delco
110
161
Completed
Antoine Aebi
85
139
Completed
Filippo Colombo
60
47
Failed
Tristan Jussaume
150
111
Failed
Andreas Odie Purnama Setiawa
90
42
Failed
Christoph Janssen
10
45
Completed
Felix Stehli
40
50
Completed
Henri Uhlig
80
65
Failed
Antonio Tiberi
75
56
Failed
Jan Sommer
70
57
Failed
Pablo Castrillo
110
103
Failed
Jason Osborne
60
90
Completed
Fabio Christen
60
53
Failed
Robin Froidevaux
70
67
Failed
Arnaud Tendon
0
0
Completed
Only 12/26 riders were able to reach their target, whereas last year only 9 failed - most by less than 20%. But in 2025, we simply had too many riders scoring far too little points - and others who only reached their target because the bar was set considerably lower than their 2024 scores.
The positive "surprise" in this list is clearly Valentin Darbellay - who had a lot of very bad races, but the Giro and the Tour de Suisse clearly saved the season for him. It's mostly thanks to him that we still reached the minimum expected score, despite many riders performing below expectations.
More Analysis
Now, if we reached the minimum expected score, why did we still finish dead last? On one hand, the minimum expectations were really low. Even lower than last year's total score of all these riders - which they actually increased by 89 points. But you have to consider that many of them reached a new level this year, or rode in a lower division in 2024. So that's not really some positive news.
On the other hand, we already mentioned pre-season that we lost 3,151 points during transfers, bringing in riders scoring less than 1,000 points in total last year. A deficit of more than 2,000 points. That's a lot.
We were hoping to fill that with some extensive training - in particular for Mauro Schmid. But you know the story - the planned training didn't make sense in the "new world" anymore; we had to pay a lot of money to at least somewhat keep him at last year's level, which we clearly failed at. So a rider who should have brought quite some points more than last year scores less - name a better scenario for a sure relegation.
And then there were those many underperformers. Let's compare the 2024 and 2025 scores of our riders - first looking at the full roster:
Rider
2024
2025
Difference
Mauro Schmid
851
610
-241
Kaden Groves
943
655
-288
Valentin Darbellay
259
642
383
Gergely Szarka
221
72
-149
Jake Stewart
69
176
107
Diego Agustin Ferreyra
133
173
40
Luis Fernando De La Cruz Chapulin
76
113
37
Jose Fernandes
150
173
23
Niklas Larsen
239
76
-163
Teten Rohendi
181
83
-98
Muhammad Abdurrahman
134
140
6
Lorenzo Delco
147
161
14
Antoine Aebi
29
139
110
Filippo Colombo
85
47
-38
Tristan Jussaume
35
111
76
Andreas Odie Purnama Setiawa
111
42
-69
Christoph Janssen
27
45
18
Felix Stehli
73
50
-23
Henri Uhlig
6
65
59
Antonio Tiberi
9
56
47
Jan Sommer
4
57
53
Pablo Castrillo
0
103
103
Jason Osborne
8
90
82
Fabio Christen
120
53
-67
Robin Froidevaux
0
67
67
Arnaud Tendon
0
0
0
This doesn't look that bad; a total of 16 riders scored more than last year, and "only" 9 scored less. The total score was - as mentioned before - 89 points higher than in 2024. All OK then?
Well, no. Let's now take a look only at those riders who were fully maxed both in 2024 and 2025:
Rider
2024
2025
Difference
Mauro Schmid
851
610
-241
Kaden Groves
943
655
-288
Valentin Darbellay
259
642
383
Gergely Szarka
221
72
-149
Diego Agustin Ferreyra
133
173
40
Jose Fernandes
150
173
23
Niklas Larsen
239
76
-163
Teten Rohendi
181
83
-98
Muhammad Abdurrahman
134
140
6
Lorenzo Delco
147
161
14
Andreas Odie Purnama Setiawa
111
42
-69
Now, that's a different picture. Because 6 out of the 9 "lower-scorers" were maxed riders - and all of them scored considerably less than last year. Schmid lost about a quarter of his 2024 points (despite the training aiming at keeping his level!), Groves even almost a third. That's a lot.
Even worse for Szarka and Larsen, who both lost 2/3 of last year's points (despite the former having far more used RDs in 2025), and both Setiawa and Rohendi also lost more than half of their points.
In total, that's a loss of more than 500 points among just these riders - and without Darbellay's training (which probably made for a lot of his improvement), it would have been even far worse.
Do we have an explanation why we got so many underperformers? Well, no. Sadly. Was it bad luck? The "new world"? Bad planning? A combination? If only we knew, then we could mitigate some issues for next year - but we don't really know. We do know for Schmid, but for many others we really can't conclude whether it was bad luck or the new reality.
On the positive side, we can note that the riders who weren't maxed in 2024 already - and therefore developed - did indeed generally improve, so we still think that the general direction isn't bad. We'll just need to find a way to get our leaders (or maxed riders in general) to perform better again.
We don't want to lose many more words about what was our worst year ever - just take the lessons we can take from this year, and keep the positive memories! Because even though the season generally was awful, there were some bright moments - there's still hope for the future! And probably a pretty busy transfer period incoming...
It was definitely clear that this season had some under-performances and disappointments, but its even more interesting to look at when you break it down like this. I will say though that the high points were pretty fun to follow. Darbellay had a great race in the Giro, and taking a stage in all the grand tours is quite a feat.
Commiserations to a fellow relegator. It will be fun to see how your approach changes in the transfer season, and there is no doubt you'll be back in with a shot at promoting quickly.
While it's always hard to relegate it should be a good time for a small reset and build new. You are comeing into PCT with a really strong base to go up again!
@all Thanks for the comments on the development post, and for the congrats on the baby Unbelievable how quickly those little creatures grow and start doing all kind of stuff
Bushwackers Sending commiserations back, that was a really unfortunate relegation for you. Looks like it's Kudus' new hobby to win a GT and relegate his team ^^
Honestly, I don't know how the offseason will turn out. I could end up with a very similar roster compared to the post-renewals one (without going into details yet), that could indeed fight for promotion - or a completely different one, adding another round of rebuilding. I guess a lot will depend on how strong and how expensive a certain talent will be
Heine Well, there already was quite some reset last offseason, we'll see how massive this year's will be
I wouldn't mind some sales and good training, but we'll see how things go. With two top teams disbanding, I heavily doubt that it's going to be a good period for sellers, unfortunately
Although last season really sucked for you I think you should still have a solid team to build around in transfers. I really hope it will work out there for you after the last two transfer periods were utterly frustrating
And I wouldn't rule out sellers actually profiting from the strong FAs available as a non-FA wage could actually make riders attractive despite the fees involved.
kb I guess it will come down to just two things whether I'll consider it a successful transfer period or not - a certain FA signing, and enough money generated for the training I'm hoping for
I guess selling might be interesting to those teams which will spend insane wages on the top shots, as they might not have much cap space left But the reduction in PCT size definitely isn't good news for sellers ^^
Team History Update
Yes, everyone is opening their 2026 HQ thread now - and so will we. But before that, let's still take a look at some interesting (at least for us and our sponsors) facts and numbers!
100 Wins
No, we haven't won 100 races yet -we're pretty far away from that number. But in our list including jersey wins as well (no NCs or Avenir, though, but including wildcard wins), we needed 4 wins of any kind to reach the magic number of 100 wins - and we got exactly these 4 wins! All of them GT stage wins, so pretty high-profile ones!
Let's take a quick look at the distribution of those 100 wins between the types of wins:
GCs
Classics
Stages
Points
KoM
U25
Team
6
8
54
8
7
5
12
So 68 of these 100 wins were actual "Race Wins", as we label them - the remaining 32 are special classifications. It's worth noting - and actually rather sad - that 2025 was the first ever season without a single team standings win - and also the first without any kind of special classification win...
Let's also take a look at the distribution of our wins among the race categories:
GT/M
PT
PTHC
HC
C1
C2HC
C2
9
5
5
14
25
10
32
The absolute record year was 2022, the year where we rocked the CT - we got 21 wins in C2 alone (14 races, 7 jerseys), plus two each in C1 and HC, making 25 wins in total. With 17 of these being actual race wins - crazy times! We're yet to find comparable success in the highest category races - even though 8 stage wins and the Maillot Vert makes it a really nice yield from our 7 GTs so far!
The next goal will be to reach 100 race wins, but if we continue at this year's rate, this will take us 8 more years - we're hoping for a little less, though!
Riders - Wins
The most successful "rider" so far is actually the team, with a total of 18 wins - 6 TTTs and 12 team standings. And in terms of individual riders?
6 riders have scored 5 wins or more - 3 thereof being sprinters, and all 6 of them being team legends to some extent. Groves was "only" able to catch up with Reinhardt this year - we'll see whether he can finally claim the exclusive lead next season! All others are too far behind, unless we somehow happened to sign one of the available world-class riders - unlikely as a relegated team, to say the least...
Riders - Points
Traditionally, our points leader has changed after every year - with one exception, when Theo Reinhardt managed to keep the lead by 4 points in his 2nd season with us...
After the 2024 season, our leader was Colin Stüssi - and he still would be had we kept him, scoring more in 2025 than any of our riders, even more than those that had a higher MGUCI rating... But given that we decided to part ways with him, he dropped down to 3rd place - here is the new ranking:
Mauro Schmid has taken the lead, after his 5th season on the team, despite scoring almost 250 points less than in 2024 - that's because Groves scored almost 300 points less than last year; had our Aussie performed at the same level, he'd be the new leader...
Groves still is among this year's winners, as is homegrown Valentin Darbellay, almost moving inside the Top 5 after a great season (and being our 2nd best scorer). There's not a single new name in the Top 10, which is another indication of how bad our season was. But who knows, maybe Bissegger could make the jump after coming back after his training-loaded loan at Simba...
We also have three "newcomers" entering the Top 30, all of them with an almost identical score - Stewart, Ferreyra and Fernandes. There are also quite some zero-pointers - but those include also our three loaned-out neo-pros and our stagiaire who only raced in Avenir.
The question is now: will Schmid retain the lead for several years to come, will a trade stop him - or will we ever sign a world-class rider who will score these 1.8k points in one or two seasons?
Riders - Loyalty
We just concluded the 7th season of our team. There is no more rider left from our year of foundation - but at least there are two riders who have been linked to the team for 6 years now:
While Stefan Bissegger's first loan-out was more or less expected - he spent a year with Puma to max out (which we could have done on our own, but we got a discount for Stüssi in return), his second stint "abroad" in the past season was rather special. But once again, it was accompanied by some bonus, which this time came as a TT training... Still, Stefan's 6 years of being linked to the team are a record!
A record he however shares with Gergely Szarka, whose story is also rather particular. In his first season, he only had a stagiaire contract, then got loaned out twice, never got lots of RDs (except for this year) - and still, he's a GT stage winner!
If we don't count loan-outs, then Manuel Stocker - our legendary leadout rider - and Mauro Schmid - our first fully homegrown talent - would lead the standings with 5 seasons each. Which is also the total number of seasons Fausto Masnada - another team legend - was under contract.
It's worth noting that more than half of the riders in the list - 51 out of 92 - have been linked to us in some way for only one season. Most of them obviously being loan-ins, but obviously also all the riders joining us for the 2025 season. We're pretty confident that these one-season riders will eventually be a minority - but it also shows that we're very open to welcome loanees, and we always want to be!
Riders - Activity
The number of RDs a rider has competed for us is obviously pretty much linked to the loyalty ranking - but it's not 1:1 the same list:
Manuel Stocker has been in the lead here since the 2021 season (our 3rd year) with his 303 race days. We thought that his "reign" would be over by the end of 2025 - but then we sold Rekita and loaned out Bissegger, his two closes "competitors". But chances are high that either Bissegger or Schmid will take the lead next year - unless our sponsors decide on a complete change in focus...
Well, actually, Stocker would only be our #2 by now. The reason is a sad one, though. In fact, Gino Mäder has done exactly 400 RDs for us. But following Gino's tragic death, his "MG self" was renamed to Valentin Darbellay, which is why Mäder's count stops at 221. And yes, he would also be the only rider to be there since the team's foundation - but we decided to stop his statistics and restart with Darbellay.
At the bottom, there are two special cases; three riders are neo-pros and loaned out, hence the 0 RDs is easily explained. But Vendrame was under contract for two years, was loaned out twice - and then left, without having ever worn our shirt in an official race. And Tendon had a stagiaire contract this year, but unfortunately we couldn't find a roster spot for him apart from Avenir, so he goes down in history as our first rider having a contract and not competing...
Riders - Greediness
Well, the title might be a little unfair - but given that not many riders actually deserved their wages this year (in particular not our top earners), we still went for it. So, which rider took the most money from us in the past 7 years?
Finding Schmid at the top is most likely not overly surprising. He has been with us for 5 years now, and he admittedly is a strong puncheur - even though he regressed a lot in the last year and should be worth about 250-300k nowadays. We'll see during renewals if he got the message.
Groves' case is a little different; we all know he's overpaid, but that's because we deliberately overspent on him in the 2024 FA due to the lack of alternatives. Those 670k are the highest yearly wage we've paid so far - let's see if we can finally cut that inital payroll into half for the upcoming year...
So, while other teams pay a million per year for a single rider, we only have two millionaries in 7 years. And given our relegation, it's rather unlikely we'll get another one soon - but never say never...
This concludes our 2025 HQ coverage. We'll likely continue more or less in the same style next year, but (maybe) with some less lengthy posts (well, probably not - but just fewer of them) - see you soon in our 2026 thread!
Kaden Groves actually did a decent job in his two goal races, failing to get back-to-back green jerseys in the TdF by just one spot (by quite a margin, though). The Ronde van Nederland was still pretty disappointing; according to our simulations, we were convinced that he could make it three GC wins in a row, but he didn't quite have the legs. 6th place is still rather respectable.
Vuelta a España
Unbelievable how quickly those little creatures grow and start doing all kind of stuff 
