Soudal-Quick Step performance: Is Remco Evenepoel pushing the facelift through completely? | cycling

Was it a negligible detail or was it symbolic?

For the first time in eternity, Quick Step-Alpha Vinyl did not finish a cycling season as a winner.

With 47 victories (excluding European and World Championships), Patrick Lefevere’s blue brigade could not grumble in 2022, but Jumbo-Visma and UAE both clocked in at 48 bites.

Moreover, Remco Evenepoel (15) and Fabio Jakobsen (13) accounted for the lion’s share.

Even if the team patron will emphasize that his team has the world champion on board again and that 2022 was a milestone thanks to the Vuelta, the figures reveal something about the current balance of power in the peloton.

Financial superpowers such as Jumbo-Visma, UAE and Ineos Grenadiers link quality to quantity and the DNA of the glutton Quick Step has undergone a minor metamorphosis.

Most important victories Quick Step-Alpha Vinyl in 2022:

Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne (Jakobsen), stage in Paris-Nice (Jakobsen), stage in Tour of the Basque Country (Alaphilippe), Liège-Bastogne-Liège (Evenepoel), stage in Giro (Cavendish), stage in Tour of Switzerland (Evenepoel), 2 stages in the Tour (Lampaert and Jakobsen), Clasica San Sebastian (Evenepoel), European Road Championships (Jakobsen) 2 stages and final win Vuelta (Evenepoel), World Championships on the road (Evenepoel)

The common thread in that steady reconversion is Remco Evenepoel. A season consists of much more than those 2 holy Sundays in April.

Even before his first overall victory in a grand tour, Evenepoel had signed a long-term deal with Lefevere, with of course much more attention to the lap work than the team was used to so far.

This approach has already paid off sooner than expected, but the pact also requires a different strategy and interpretation of the rider base.

This axis shift is not yet concretely observable, since Lefevere had offered the majority of his base-resistant core a contract extension of 2 seasons at the end of 2021.

With the arrival of lender Soudal, the future is assured for several years and the budget will also grow progressively, but there were now hardly any vacancies.

Oldies Mark Cavendish and Zdenek Stybar had to make way, Iljo Keisse gets into the support car, Stijn Steels didn’t get a new contract and Mikkel Honoré went looking for freedom and broke his contract.

Their absence was filled with the hiring of climber Jan Hirt, destined lead-out Casper Pedersen and Belgian champion Tim Merlier.

The arrival of Tim Merlier was written in the stars.

At Alpecin-Deceuninck, the sprinter had been overtaken by Jasper Philipsen, Merlier described Quick Step as “a boyhood dream” and Lefevere had long been charmed by the West Flemish sprint bomb.

The link with Frank Vandenbroucke – Merlier forms a couple with daughter Cameron – also strikes a chord with Quick Step’s The Godfather.

Merlier – 30 – was also able to go to UAE, but deliberately waited for a blue proposal and signed for 3 seasons. It is said that he will not race for an apple and an egg with the best Belgian team.

It is an investment that is questioned left and right, because was a top sprinter really a priority and is Merlier worth that bite out of the limited budget?

His profile is also very close to that of Fabio Jakobsen, on paper still the A-sprinter in the team.

Let both sprint bombs compose their competition program separately from each other and that will yield a lot of parallels.

One-day races such as Kuurne, the Scheldeprijs and Gent-Wevelgem would then be marked in red on both notes.

And what about the big rounds? Merlier is not a fan of a 3-week tour, but the Tour is a bit of a mecca for every sprinter.

Jakobsen – end of contract at the end of 2023 – will of course not just give up his place.

Sprint team mates? “At dinner you talk to each other. When the programs are made, the other sprinter becomes a puppet,” Jakobsen stated in the podcast of ex-rider Laurens ten Dam at the end of November.

“I think Tim Merlier is a nice guy, but he is also such a doll.”

That was not a derogatory remark, but the confident Jakobsen pointed out that in recent years he had also had to compete against team competitors such as Elia Viviani, Fernando Gaviria, Sam Bennett and Mark Cavendish.

Successfully.

One by one, those internal competitors have found their way to the exit, despite his horror fall, Jakobsen is still on his throne.

Putting the Dutch-Belgian puzzle together will have been a major challenge in recent weeks.

For the program of many teammates, much, if not everything, of course depends on how Remco Evenepoel has put together his race calendar.

Liège-Bastogne-Liège and the Giro will be Evenepoel’s priorities this spring and into the spring.

He will undoubtedly brush off the pressure and curse of the rainbow jersey like a speck of dust, but the expectation pattern is even higher after 2022 than was already the case.

In principle, Evenepoel can only be satisfied with the pink jersey in Italy, but the Spanish question will also return on Italian soil: how strong is his team really in the rounds?

Ilan Van Wilder, Louis Vervaeke and tutti quanti have outdone themselves on their way to Madrid and may have made some (mental) progress, with only Jan Hirt the requested reinforcement was meager.

The key question is therefore how patient the eager Evenepoel will be and remain if his team has to box in a different weight category than round machines such as Jumbo-Visma and UAE.

And maybe take an uppercut every now and then.

Is the Ineos story from a few months ago bubbling up again during a slump?

2023 will therefore be a pivotal season on the transfer market. Depending on the source, 15 to 20 riders are out of contract.

A (small) landslide is therefore not excluded. Although Lefevere may have to turn his heart into a stone.

His contract ends in 2023:

including Dries Devenyns, Florian Sénéchal, Fabio Jakobsen, Michael Morkov, Mattia Cattaneo, Pieter Serry, Davide Ballerini, Rémi Cavagna, Bert Van Lerberghe, Tim Declercq, Andrea Bagioli, Mauri Vansevenant, Mauro Schmid, Louis Vervaeke, Ilan Van Wilder, Stan Van Tricht

bron: procyclingstats.com

The outcome of the mercato will also determine whether Soudal-Quick Step can still be classified as “the team for the (cobblestone) classics”.

Last year, during a particularly lean Flemish spring, those legs were already drastically cut. Kasper Asgreen, Yves Lampaert and Florian Sénéchal are just about the last of the Mohicans.

They stood and watched, though Asgreen and co were overloaded by all the plagues of Egypt.

A leader at the level of Wout van Aert or Mathieu van der Poel is no longer there and since their blocks grow every year, the tactics of the blue collective can no longer be played out sufficiently.

It should therefore come as no surprise that Julian Alaphilippe has set his sights on Flanders again.

The Frenchman is rid of the rainbow and wants to flush an annus horribilis as quickly as possible.

Does he leave Liège entirely to Evenepoel and does he want to take full advantage of the freedom in Flanders’ Most Beautiful and – for the last? – in the Tour de France?

Chouchou “Loulou” will be especially keen on his 30th birthday to prove that it won’t be a “Once upon a time” story.

Lefevere would love to see it and has already stimulated his Frenchman in the newspapers.

If only not to put all the pressure on the shoulders of the young world champion.

Like a good pater familias and bookkeeper, the attention of the éminence grise will not slacken for a second in this pivotal year to maintain the delicate balance between that new horizon and its own backyard.

Because as Cyclingnews.com paraphrased an old football quote so beautifully in a cycling jacket: “Patrick Lefevere is not always right, but he is never wrong.”

View the full cycling calendar in 2023 here.