At first, I thought I'd just post the raw numbers, having lost a lot of motivation after Tour of Ukraine. But I guess it's part of the game to deal with randomness and a stupid game engine, so here's the ranking update in the usual format.
However, if most of you would just prefer the numbers without any text, please tell me, as even though I like doing these updates, it's not worth the effort if no-one actually cares.
Period Ranking | February
The second month had a maximum of 7 races for PT teams, with three teams competing in all of them (Amaysim, MOL and Puma). 5 of them were mandatory - including the triple-clash and the first monument of the year. But that one's gonna be the last race covered, so first things first:
And first came Volta a Portugal. Formerly an 11-day race, it has been compacted to 9 and then even just 8 stages in recent years - still being the longest PTHC race on the calendar.
Unsurprisingly, the highscore - 350 points - was achieved by Carlsberg. Back-to-back stage wins by Galta and Kämna, plus - most importantly - the GC (and KoM) win by the former got the Danes a good chunk of points here.
Rather surprisingly, on the other hand, Giannoutsos finished 2nd in the GC - and alongside a less surprising 9th place GC finish by Carapaz, this race was worth 282 points for the Greeks.
And 3rd place? Well, surely not the 3rd ranked of the GC, as that was a PCT rider - surprisingly, the GC result actually didn't matter much for Aker's total points tally! Amezawa in 14th (and without notable stage results) didn't score much in fact - but SKA did! Prologue win plus 5-day stint in yellow was worth 120 points alone - some additional points by Mohoric (winning the points jersey ahead of SKA) and Amezawa bring up their tally to 228 points - being the final PT team above 200 points.
The 2nd race of the month was a race you either love, or hate - the Team Time Trial across Øresund bridge, Copenhagen - Malmö. And the TTT kings of EA Vesuvio wrote some history there, getting the 3rd consecutive win! Which was worth 250 points. Behind the dominators, it was an insanely close race for 2nd, with 4 teams finishing on the exact same time! Cedevita got the upper hand on fractions, netting them 175 points, while Polar were the lucky ones claiming the final podium spot alongside 140 points.
Next up were the two stage races in the triple-clash. Tirreno goes first, following the calendar.
And what a dominant race that was by Merhawi Kudus! It wasn't enough to "just" win the GC - by far not enough. GC win, three stage wins, points jersey, KoM jersey - at least he wasn't eligible for the U25 standings, leaving that for someone else. His 496 points are a new highscore this year (previously: 447 for Philipsen in Qatar), and may very well be this year's top value outside GTs. The rest of the team didn't do much, but the 529 points for Moser still are the 2023 highscore so far.
About 150 points behind follow Jo Dombrowski and Gazelle. 4 stage podiums - 3x 2nd, 1x 3rd - and runner-up in the GC are worth 340 points, with the team netting 378 in total - again, not much depth here.
Which is quite a different case for Cedevita! Pogacar may "only" have finished 7th in the GC, in addition to an easy U25 win - but Enger with back-to-back stage wins and two days in yellow adds almost the same amount of points, bringing the team's total tally up to 346 points!
Over to Paris - Nice then, the longest PT stage race (bar GTs) on the calendar. Unlike Tirreno, this one was for the TTers, who combine skills against the clock with strong hills riding - at least that's what we thought.
And the one who had the strongest package of these skills was Tom Wirtgen! He won the decisive ITT, but was also able to beat all puncheurs bar Lutsenko on the most "selective" stage, on day 7. He scored 346 points, with Vesuvio getting 381 in total - just 3 more than the second highest scoring team in Tirreno, showing that no rider really dominated this race.
In 2nd place, we have... ZARA. Conci "only" finished 4th in the GC - tied with 3rd place, though - but with Cosnefroy in 13th and Castrillo in 19th they had some great depth. And they had Thijssen, winning stage 6 and ending up 2nd on the final stage. That's 367 points for the Spaniards - with the highest individual score being 148, that's some really strong depth!
And it looks like Cedevita have a lock on 3rd place in this triple-header, totalling 306 points. Hart in 3rd place in the GC was obviously their best scorer, but Rajovic with a stage win and Lammertink with 2nd place in the ITT added some good points as well. Which actually makes them the best scoring team from the two triple-header stage races combined!
The final race in that often mentioned triple-header was a classic, the Classique du Grand-Duché. Which has nothing to do with a big shower, as mentioned by some manager, but rather means the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg - meaning this was Vesuvio's home race.
And what else but a win would be good enough in a home race? Well, Silvio Herklotz actually played the party pooper part to perfection, annoying the pure puncheurs and getting the win. Madouas added some more than minimum points to Herklotz' 225, getting Puma's score up to 261. Which is the exact same amount as runner up MAL's Evonik team scored, with Blums (10th), Polanc (19th), Foss (33rd) and Koch (41st) getting some depth points. Home team Vesuvio, led by 3rd placed Valter, got 187 points, which is the 3rd best score.
Overall, Gazelle were the best triple-header team (714), narrowly edging out Cedevita (711). Moser (663) follow in 3rd, scoring only small points apart from Tirreno.
No respite for some of the PT teams, as the Tour of Ukraine followed just two days after the end of Paris - Nice. Another race for time triallists with decent uphill skills - at least by the looks of it, once again.
And while Wirtgen wasn't able to get back-to-back stage race wins, he still finished 2nd in both TTs and in the GC and points standings. However, despite not winning the race, Vesuvio had such insane depth (Munton 11th, Cabrera 15th, Pelikan 19th, Girdlestone 22nd, Valter 32nd, De Bod 33rd), plus a 3rd place by Valter on the hilly stage, plus the U25 win by Munton, plus the team standings win - that they still picked up most points - 439 to be precise. Which is the 3rd highest value for a race this year - in a 3-day PTHC race that is!
It definitely wasn't Phinney's fault that MOL didn't come out on top - he won every single stage, and obviously the GC and points standings, plus the shared KoM win on top of that. But on top of his 373 points, there were just 23 more by the rest of the team - mainly by Filutas (29th in GC). 396 points for the Hungarians, who surely won't be unhappy with their yield, either.
We then have to go more than 100 points down to 3rd place, which is taken by Polar. Bernal just missed out on the GC podium by taking 4th, but with Mullen (10th) and Shikai (12th), they scored two more great GC results on top of that - 282 points in total for the Finns.
To round off the month, the PT teams headed back to Italy for the year's first monument, the Primavera. Sprinter race? Puncheur race? Late attacker race?
Well, the sprinters took it this time, although some puncheurs did fairly well, too. With Caleb Ewan, one of the big Qatar losers took his first monument win and 280 points. Unsurprisingly, ISA's total 325 points were unmatched. Coquard has also struggled quite a lot in stage races (at least in classic bunch sprints) so far, but 2nd place in Sanremo is a good result, rewarded by 250 points for ELCO. 3rd placed Gaviria's Moser managed to bring 4 additional riders in the Top 50, meaning the Czechs leave with 225 points.
That's it. And where does this get us in February?
If you think you often read "EA" or "Vesuvio", that's obviously no coincidence. The Luxembourgers indeed win the month, scoring 1,476 points. They already topped February last year - but they're more than 200 points above last year's value where we had the same races! That's pretty strong I'd say. And a PpRD of above 60, by the way...
Pretty strong probably is an understatement for the runner-up. While EA are a well-established team, Cedevita have only just promoted - but by scoring 1,326 (also exceeding last year's February highscore), they have definitely arrived in the top league, and even more than that! They're just 150 points behind Vesuvio.
But they're almost 300 points ahead of the next teams - we actually have a trio within just 33 points. Leading the way - and taking the final podium spot - are Team Puma. Unlike the two previous teams, they have raced everywhere (the Top 2 don't have Portugal), so they spent 8 days more to reach 1,038 points. Polar (without Portugal) and ELCO (without Ukraine) round off the monght's Top 5, scoring 1,014 and 1,005 points respectively.
The next three teams are separated by just 25 points, trailing the Top 5 by 60 points. Gazelle, Carlsberg and Moser are in this group ranging from 945 down to 920 points. ZARA and ISA are the only teams between 800 and 900 points, with the latter being one of just two teams not doing any PTHC races (hence spending just 21 RDs). And that's the February Top 10.
Trailing the Top 10 by some 60-odd points are MOL and Binance, separated by two points. And some 40 points ahead of Aker, who in turn have a 40 points margin over Amaysim. By the way, Amaysim are the first team scoring less than half of EA's points this month - despite racing everywhere...
Rounding off the Top 15 are cycleYorkshire, the final team above 600 points.
At the bottom of the table, Grieg must be longing for the cobbles. Only 359 points and the lowest PpRD of 12.38 surely aren't good for their ambitions (they scored almost three times as much last year). But Rabobank and Minions - both just above 400 points - can't be happy, either. Lidl are slightly better off, getting close to 500 points, and racing less. King Power, Tinkoff and Evonik are the final teams not mentioned yet, with all of them longing for the cobbles, the hills, or both.
Team
Por
Cop
T-A
P-N
Duc
Ukr
MSR
Total
RD
PpRD
1
EA Vesuvio
0
250
81
381
187
439
138
1476
24
61.50
2
Cedevita
0
175
346
306
59
260
180
1326
24
55.25
3
Team Puma - SAP
112
90
82
248
261
200
45
1038
32
32.44
4
Polar
0
140
182
207
38
282
165
1014
24
42.25
5
ELCO - ABEA
283
75
77
248
72
0
250
1005
29
34.66
6
Gazelle
107
5
378
254
82
0
119
945
29
32.59
7
Carlsberg - Danske Bank
350
5
287
208
45
0
45
940
29
32.41
8
Moser - Sygic
0
20
529
99
35
12
225
920
24
38.33
9
ZARA - Irizar
0
45
213
367
43
132
86
886
24
36.92
10
ISA - Hexacta
0
35
92
272
128
0
325
852
21
40.57
11
MOL Cycling Team
170
10
92
41
40
396
40
789
32
24.66
12
Binance
174
25
218
180
116
0
74
787
29
27.14
13
Aker - MOT
228
0
128
109
170
0
107
742
29
25.59
14
Amaysim Australia.com
46
15
303
163
97
21
59
704
32
22.00
15
cycleYorkshire
0
65
260
102
30
110
89
656
24
27.33
16
Evonik - ELKO
0
30
45
102
261
109
50
597
24
24.88
17
Tinkoff - La Datcha Team
101
105
67
127
90
0
84
574
29
19.79
18
King Power
70
50
74
196
67
0
90
547
29
18.86
19
Lidl Cycling
0
0
219
136
51
0
76
482
21
22.95
20
Minions
0
40
121
51
62
41
95
410
24
17.08
21
Rabobank
48
10
135
57
54
0
103
407
29
14.03
22
Grieg-Maersk
9
125
65
56
35
0
69
359
29
12.38
Full Ranking
Let's start with the obvious: Leaders after January, winners of February - obviously EA Vesuvio are still leading the PT standings, and they have massively extended their lead. Being ahead of Polar by just 13 points after the first month, the gap to 2nd has extended to... 448 points! What a start of the year for the Luxembourgers, already exceeding 2,000 points by now, standing at 2,208!
But in relative terms, Cedevita's performance must be valued almost at the same level! Taking over a huge legacy from former Slovenian top team Isostar, the men in orange are doing a fantastic job so far, and are up to 2nd in the current standings! Yes, the gap to 1st is big - but I'm sure they won't care at all!
Polar have slipped down one position, but they're only 27 points behind Cedevita. One thing to notice is that the Top 3 all haven't raced in Portugal, so they scored more with 8 days less in the saddle than some other teams!
Leading the "rest" - which isn't a completely wrong term, given that the gap to the podium is more than 300 points already - are MOL and Puma. They're just above 1,400 points - with Moser following a handful points behind, but roughly at the same level (and without Portugal as well).
ZARA - another newly promoted team - follow in 7th place, roughly another 100 points back. Then we have ELCO, and a 3rd newly promoted team with Carlsberg, roughly 80 and 120 points behind the Spaniards.
Rounding off the Top 10 - in a pretty close race - are Gazelle, 24 points ahead of ISA, and 50 points ahead of cycleYorkshire. Aker as the final team above 1,000 points are only a couple more points behind.
Amaysim and Lidl are just below that 1,000 points mark - with the latter having spent 13 RDs less than the former, last year's PCT dominators. King Power and Binance then are the final teams above the relegation zone.
So, who's missing? 5 teams within just 101 points from each other - but already 80 points and more behind safety. Tinkoff and Grieg should get some possibilities to move up in March though, with the cobbles waiting - the same holds for current red lantern Rabobank. Evonik and Minions, who both are rather betting on mountains and hills, might have to wait for April and May to make a big jump...
Despite all Wirtgen magic, Jasper Philipsen holds onto P1, doing pretty well himself in P-N and MSR. He's currently at 814 points, having spent 18 RDs.
Said Tom Wirtgen follows only 4 points back, having a slightly stronger PpRD though with only 16 RDs raced.
In 3rd place, however, we have a rider who only spent 6 RDs so far, picking up the insane amount of 737 points (well above 100 PpRD!) - Taylor Phinney. A great start of the year suggests he may still challenge Herklotz for #1, despite his decline - an interesting fight upcoming?
We'll see that later in the year. Right now, we have Merhawi Kudus in 4th place, scoring 496 points in Tirreno. Which is 26 points more than Fernando Gaviria has to his name so far. Bryan Coquard follows in 6th place, just 10 points back. 3 sprinters in the Top 6 isn't overly surprising at this point, though.
We then have the first pure TT specialist in 7th place with Filippo Ganna. Freddy Galta, Caleb Ewan and Nick van der Lijke are the final riders above 400 points - and they round off the Top 10. Which are pretty crowded with sprinters, taking 5/10 spots currently.
Surely the cobbles will have some impact in March, with the sprinters having far less chances to shine. What will the Top 10 look like after the next month?
We don't know, of course - but here's the current ranking:
MSR changed everything for us, leaving the month (our best on paper) with a respectable outing.
Must admit, I thought it was looking worse, but things are still very critical as Jan-Feb was our peak of the season. It’s downhill from here and I doubt the gap is big enough. Especially when looking at how much faith we have to put in Coquards GC races, which seems broken.
Extremely poor period for us. Kind of to be expected with the triple where he had nothing going and PTHC races not in our bands/not suiting us. But it's going to be an uphill battle if we don't get some results in quickly. Luckily the cobbles are not far away.
The month of February was the biggest month for us. Paris-Nice and Ukraine were races I expected to do well at with TGH and depth leading the way. I didn't quite know where I'd rank for the Copenhagen TTT, but after seeing we had the 2nd best average, it was nice to see we could finish in that spot, even if just barely
The surprise races are Tirreno and Sanremo. It's mostly down to Enger really scoring well with back-to-back stages and being best of the rest on Via Roma. Pogacar also showed himself in what was a stacked field of climbers.
Apart from Praha I'm expecting a long scoring drought now as the season moves into the cobbled and hilly classics, where we'll mostly be there just picking up finishing points. This period was great though, hopefully we have enough of a buffer to carry us for the remainder of the season.
I like the writeup but if i had to pick between a big one like this with great writeup every second month and a "just the numbers one" every month, i'd pick the shorter one every month for sure. All the text around it are a (appreciated) bonus. Thanks for your work!
Another very mediocre month for us. Grand Duche was great and P-N was surprisingly solid but the rest of the month was bad. Next month could be slightly better with one excellent race coming up but again, the rest of the month is mostly okayish only. So we might be stuck in the bottom half for a bit longer...
Happy to see us tick over nicely in Feb, even if we largely remain 'just' average for the time being - although that being said, we lose roughly 150pts on this point last year as Morton had a less impressive TA despite being 3rd . Crucially we remain clear of the relegation zone which is the aim again this year.
Remains to be seen if we can carry on this point scoring over the classics season with Yates looking to at least offset the loss of Summerhill...
Also I do like reading these reviews Fab but I understand if you dont have the time/motivation
John St Ledger in Team Bunzl-Centrica and Team U25
Horrible month for us with the leaders just not showing up. Admittedly the triple header forced some unconvential scheduling perhaps, but we need to pick up the pace in the coming months. Cobbles aren't going to bring us much but looking forward to the Ardennes where Kinoshita is in his element.
Decent period. Getting the highest score in the triple header is cool.
Dombrowski definitely delivered.
Lutsenko didn't because of the problems with hilly stages. But his top 10 in MSR did compensate a bit.
Since we lack the skill to participate in the TT bonanza 10th is an acceptable possition to be in.
Edited by DubbelDekker on 11-11-2023 14:23
Ultimately a pretty good month for us. Any time we're in the top half of scorers without any Per cobbled race days has to be considered a success. of course, our points are inflated quite a bit since we scored most fot hem in Portugal where a lot of teams didn't even participate. But we can't really complain about that when Portugal went so well. Tirreno was very solid too as the fourth best scoring team. And I guess I underestimated our scoring in Paris-Nice. With Kamna's failure and AKA losing the points jersey on the last day, I felt like we'd be near the bottom of the scorers there, but we're solid mid pack. I didn't account for how much winning stages and holding jerseys matters in PT. Ditto for just having guys finish the races - no more zero pointers!
Way way too early to look at standings. Being in the top 10 before Per starts his cobbles calendar is definitely nice, though a few of the teams I expect to be competing with for relegation are ahead or around us, so doesn't really mean much. Still, Galta has already almost matched his point total from last year and is yet to ride his GT, so things have been going well for sure.
RIP Exxon Duke, David Veilleux, Double Feature, and Monster Energy
Not a great month, though we're probably scoring about as expected so far despite a few big underperformances. I suspect that if De Bie continues to struggle we'll be in the relegation battle from here on out, but I can't say I'd be too sad about dropping back down to PCT - it'd be nice to be reminded what winning things is like
The lack of any PTHC RDs for us so far may end up being beneficial, but I don't think we'll score particularly well when we do make up those RDs, as there's quite a few cobble and TT races in there. Looking at what awaits in March I suspect we're a good bet to be last, with Colombia the only race we may be in and around the top 10 in.
I really do enjoy reading these reviews! Your excellent play-by-play contextualizes the numbers nicely and truly adds quality to the whole thing.
I'm very happy with how things went so far, outside of a few bad races from Kanter which comes at a way lower wage cost for us though compared to the headaches other sprinters cause their teams.
Ganna has already reached 80% of his points total from last season after just a few months, and Silvio has capitalized on his only two RD so far, which leads to a comparably comfortable position for us before we're expected to struggle in the upcoming spring classics.
Hard to predict where we're going in the overall picture with only one good GT coming up compared to the two guaranteed scores when Demare covered another one, so it's still way too early to get excited about anything.
That's obviously an amazing start for Vesuvio, getting a sizeable lead in the first two months already. And looking at what's next, I don't really expect this to change anytime soon, as they also have two favourites in Nederland and Praha, with Van der Lijke and Wirtgen (if the latter participates, but I'd strongly expect him to). Of course, they'll lose some of their margin after Colombia (where they don't participate) and the four cobbled classics (where they don't have any top rider) - but I can't see Cedevita or Polar make up a lot of ground this month (OK, maybe if Philipsen gets back to Qatar-mode).
If Altur finally starts doing what he should, MOL could be in the best position of making a jump at the end of the month, otherwise in the Top 10 we only have Carlsberg (Per) and Gazelle (Teunissen) with strong cobblers.
It's been a rough start for some sprinter teams for sure, especially Rabobank with two top sprinters have been hit and aren't looking in great shape so far. Also, strange to see Evonik so far down - but if PHL still has zero points (because zero RDs), and MAL hasn't raced a lot, either, we know that we can expect more to come.
On the other hand, SAP have made a huge jump compared to last year - which is mainly due to Ganna and the extremely favourable treatment of TTers in races like Ukraine and P-N (plus the far less random daily form), as also mentioned by cio. Weird how a seemingly minor change (game version) can have a major impact on the scoring.
Will definitely be interesting to see how the team and individual standings evolve going forward!
Sensational write up! Thank you for that. And if it is not always possible, I am very happy to see the numbers without the write up, as it gives an overview of how things are going.
We are okay being a mid-table team for now. Now starts the huge part of our season with the classics, both cobbles and hills. Hopefully we can get Wisniowski and Mohoric to score big, which will be key to give us some room before getting to the GTs.
This season has been absolutely awful from my team so far. Hsu's stagewin in Qatar was the only upside so far. Other than that my team couldn't fulfill their expectations. It started already before the first rankings update. In this period the biggest diappointments were Sosa as a top 10 favorite in Portugal dropping back to support a rider that is significantly worse and Mano not hanging on in the hilly stages in Paris-Nice.
Anyways the season is still long and it can only get better from now on and I'm confident that it will.
Thanks for the rankings update and to the reporters for their work!
. Crucially we remain clear of the relegation zone which is the aim again this year.
