What else to say than it was long overdue...for various reasons the PCT and CT division lacked another proper update in between, but finally it`s here to get a decent picture after around half of the season.
Previously Farfetch was at the top with a gap of more than 250 points! First chasing team was Repsol, who climbed fast in between update 1 & 2, were they able to keep going?
Mapei, Popo4Ever and Valio were next ahead of Bakafrost, Lierse and Duolingo in a close fight for the promotion, while Nordstrom, Kraftwerk, Azteca, Fablok and Adastra were in the unwanted bottom 5.
What did change since then?
Well, the top 3 is still the same but Farfetch has opened up the gap even more. Almost 500 points now and having spent a lot less race days as all other top teams! Looking very good for them. Repsol and Mapei closely between each other for the podium spots while it`s still close with several teams not more than 1-2 good races behind.
Bakkadrost and Popo4Ever still on a very consistent level but it`s MOL making a bit jump from 18th to 5th and also Xero up to 7th and Polar up to 8th did a decent period.
Duolingo dropped a bit while Podium Ambition slowly going up.
At the bottom Campari looking really desperate now, they have quite a gap already and similar for Aramco just ahead. Both teams are in big trouble.
Nordstrom, Azteca and Adastra the other teams under the line but for those it`s still very close with in especially GCN not far ahead but also Swisslion, Fablok far from safe, while it`s looking a bit better for the teams above even though the trend not looking good for neither Andorra, Lierse or Valio.
Pos
Last
Team
Total
RD
PpRD
Proj
1
1
Farfetch Pro Cycling
2994
106
28,25
4944
2
2
Repsol - Netflix
2547
115
22,15
3876
3
3
Mapei
2535
113
22,43
3925
4
6
Bakkafrost
2423
116
20,89
3656
5
18
MOL
2366
113
20,94
3665
6
4
Team Popo4Ever p/b Nemiroff
2209
121
18,26
3196
7
14
Xero Racing
2156
111
19,42
3399
8
10
Polar
2106
109
19,32
3381
9
8
Duolingo
1942
113
17,19
3008
10
13
Podium Ambition
1904
126
15,11
2644
11
11
Berg Cycles
1803
111
16,24
2842
12
12
Minions
1781
102
17,46
3056
13
20
DK - SVA Zalgiris
1777
113
15,73
2753
14
15
Desigual
1748
99
17,66
3091
15
5
Valio - Viking Genetics
1746
111
15,73
2753
16
7
Lierse SK - Pizza Ullo PCTeam
1722
104
16,56
2898
17
25
Kraftwerk Man Machine
1579
96
16,45
2879
18
9
Andorra Cycling Project
1547
99
15,63
2735
19
23
Fablok - Chocolate Jacques
1360
89
15,28
2674
20
17
Swisslion Cycling Team
1311
114
11,5
2013
21
16
GCN Racing
1274
118
10,8
1890
22
22
Adastra N Hell Energy Cycling
1238
118
10,49
1836
23
24
Azteca - NBCSN
1222
95
12,86
2251
24
26
Nordstrom - CA Technologies
1221
110
11,1
1943
25
21
Aramco DP
1093
106
10,31
1804
26
19
Campari Asahi Procycling
861
98
8,79
1538
Due to the big amount of races and lack of time on my side, I can`t give you a very detailled view into the races, but here a list with all races in chronological order from California to Riga. Hope you all understand the abbrevations.
As often in the past years Pluchkin is dominating in the PCT rankings. Summerhill following with a bit of a gap. Nothing new as both are too good for riding in the PCT to be fair.
Gesink might be ageing, but he still has it and is the best of the rest and not far behind neither while Manninen continued his great run from last season and now being the best PCT sprinter even and by far the most consistent, at least a bit ahead of Guarnieri, who is coming closest.
Eastman and Tenorio as best pure stage racers next to Pluchkin while Bennett, Kudus and Yates all had their good races ahead of Cattaneo, Monsalve and Guldhammer, who lack the consistency.
Campari look in a real bad spot, but they might be able to get back in the fight with a couple of great results. Otherwise I'm pretty sure it's the 6 teams between us and Aramco that will fight out for the 2 remaining spots that provide safety. Andorra might drop down slightly, but they should have enough about them with Summerhill and Vanspeybrouck. Azteca look to be the prime candidate to jump out of the relegation spots. They have the most RDs available, the best ppRD down there and have the clear best rider in Eastman.
As for us, we have a mini cushion over the rest right now, but with Saber's and Boeckmans's RDs nearly spent, we will be relying on this season's unreliable Beltran to save us. He is only the 7th best puncheur right now!! We need to start scoring some results from breakaways otherwise it's gonna be super hard to avoid the drop. And to think I improved this squad based on last year
Thanks for all you hard work in bringing us this update roturn
I knew it was bad, just didn't realise it was this bad. AI has been killing me lately, mostly Bonifazio not sprinting and then of course the recent GP Cyclistes fiasco. Our promotion chances are gone and with Oomen and De Plus losing their U25 bonus points, I don't think we can get closer with this team.
Ewan on his way to earning the same wage next season as we paid to sign him as a rookie! Altur on his way to the record books as worst return vs training spend in MG history!
And somehow AC is making a case for himself as Surprise Of The Year as a 79TT rider fighting for a Top20 Individual ranking place
Still we end up looking over our shoulders towards ~20th place. However vs the scoring of Maninen/Guarnieri and Vanspeybrouck i can't help but think we really should have been looking much further upwards than that.
We've been stuck in the mid-table for three years now. At least we have less RD than those around us, but it all depends on Uran showing up again and Vesely not blowing sprints.
Alrighty, weve done quite well for ourselves, wont be sniffing promotion, but looking to be very safe, but probably dropping a few spots as Denifl's season is almost done. Dees Nuts done very well for himself, certainly seems to have lived up to his wage so far. And glad to see us being the only respectable team from CT promotions (I think?).
I'm not worried about relegation. We don't have a sprinter and our cobble leader is needs hills. We should move into the mid table solely based on how Wellens is doing. This PPRD would be so much higher if we had kept Guardini. Would've liked to be higher than this though
This is still much tighter than expected to the non-promotion spots. Kudus latest underperformances have surely key in that, and he doesn't have many RDs left, only 11
So basically Zmorka and Dunbar keeping us in the promotion spots, because freaking Vanmarcke won't even make Top100 in the rankings.... Zmorka has enough RD's left to even double his current points.
Will be key that Kittel starts to deliver on some timetrial ffs, it's unbelievable that a rider that has the third highest TT stat in the division hasn't scored yet a point from a ITT stage all season, in like 8 chances. Because with him basically having the same calendar as Zmorka, i expected him to be in the 500-600 point range, and this rate, if he can reach 250 i'll be incredibly lucky
Really good period for us! Guarnieri is having an outstanding season, Monsalve has started to perform after a slow start and we have seven more riders contributing with at least 80 points each, which is absolutely great to see.
Fantastic to sit 4th overall, but the promotion fight is close, as you would expect. Polar and Xero especially looks like dangerous contenders, and maybe also Popo4Ever depending on how many RD's Pluchkin have left. Could be necessary with as much as 3400 points to promote this year, which looking at the calendar, I fear might be tough for us. But we'll cross our fingers and give it a go!
We are in exactly the same position in relation to the last update, but what I don't like very much is the projection for the final score that would make us fall about 4 positions.
In spite of everything, I cannot be unhappy because we are more than safe from a possible descent.
Individually, Ben Swift has had an excellent season, but will only have 3 more races by the end of the season. Montoya and Paulinho are very equal in terms of points won, but while Paulinho will still participate in 5 races, Montoya will only have 2 more which for now makes him the biggest disappointment of the team so far.
The rest of the team has been within what was expected with only 2 exceptions, on the positive side we have Aular who, despite being only on level 3, has already won almost 100pts, for the negative Silvestre who despite having worked for Swift in some races should have been able to earn more points than what he has achieved so far.
Wow, what a jump from 16th to 5th. Waeytens, Pomoshnikov and Maksimov doing way better then my expectations, Cattaneo and Choi doing good, Gebre and Lo Cicero need to step up, the others pick points here and there. All in all a good season so far, my only concern is that Cattaneo almost finished hes race days. But a strong middle result is still ok for us.
Obviously not looking too flash for us at the moment.
But the positive is that we can only really go up from here. Only need a few really good races to get us back into the relegation dog fight. Hopefully the fighting spirit comes out!
Worse case scenario, the squad is well set-up for the CT
Pretty much where I think we should be. The season has been going very much as anticipated with a reliable pointscorer like Gesink at the helm. Except for Ukraine he's been excepcional. If we were to find some depth in our squad we could actually fight for promotion but there's just not enough quality for us to score substantially outside the Gesink schedule I guess.
Thanks for the preview roturn, it's always great to know where we end at during the season!
And congrats jph, I think you can already book the champion's ribbons!
