Spring Classics
As a brand new team where the focus was mainly on the classics with the aquisition of Olympic champion Greg van Avermaet, there was support behind him but in the vital moments the team didn't have riders to cover moves or attack as the other teams did, so the Belgian many times found himself on the back foot but still he was consistent throughout the whole cobbles season, he finished on the podium of Omloop and E3 before a couple of modest results in Flandres where he closed the Top10 and Paris-Roubaix where he hit the door, adding to this he finished sixth in Strade Bianche.
As for the other riders the results didn't come in much and in the Ardennes Alessandro De Marchi finished seventh in Amstel but the other hilly classics didn't bring results, van Avermaet was consistent throughout the opening months but depth lacked from the rest of the team.
Stage-Races
The season started off great actually with Patrick Bevin winning the New Zealand TT nationals and then won a stage and was on his way to defend his lead in Tour Down Under until a crash derailed his chances to do so, van Avermaet took a win some weeks later in Valencia, and well there haven't been proper highlights in the stage-races, with some solid performances but nothing that stood out until van Avermaet won again in Yorkshire after what was touted from the outside as a weak classics season (which I disagree). Riccardo Zoidl and Jakub Mareczko took some results in May/June, and then in the Tour it came apart again as De Marchi suffered serious injuries in a crash, and despite looking very good and consistent again van Avermaet failed to net a win in the Tour which was the team's goal. That being said he then went on to finish fourth in Binckbank, but his results and highlights came in the post-Tour classics which I'll get too.
Grand Tours
As I mentioned the Tour didn't go well as van Avermaet couldn't materialize his form and De Marchi suffered a huge crash that took him out, Patrick Bevin also dropped out of the race early on after braking ribs in a crash, Simon Geschke rode quite a good race which was in contrast to his also injury-marked season. In the Giro Mareczko struggled to be there in the sprints so there wasn't really success there whilst De La Parte and Antunes tried to net a win but couldn't make it, it didn't come out as a good performance.
As for the Vuelta, same story, Victor de la Parte was riding a great race until a crash took him out of the race, Bevin had returned to racing and was almost taking the stage win finally in the Pau ITT but finished second, later on he abandoned the race to prepare for the worlds leaving Jonas Koch and Szymon Sajnok to get some interesting results mainly in the sprints.
Season Finale
After the Tour van Avermaet went on for a brilliant classics period with second in San Sebastian, sixth in Bretagne and in Canada he finished third in Quebèc and won Montreal to top off and make up for the lack of a big win in the year. most of the results afterwards came from some Belgian classics mostly where there were no wins but the jersey was on display until the end.
Wins (WT): 6 (2)
Highlight: GVA's win in Montréal
Best Performer: Greg van Avermaet
Biggest Surprise: Szymon Sajnok
Negative Surprise: Serge Pauwels
Ranking: 4/10
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