Back to the future? A closer look at Soudal-QuickStep's post-Evenepoel reboot

Back to the Future recently returned to cinemas to mark the 40th anniversary of its release, so maybe it’s only fitting that this winter sees Soudal-QuickStep building towards a future that bears heavy echoes of the team’s illustrious past.

Even the Marty McFly of their original story, Tom Boonen, got in on the act, declaring himself open to a belated sequel as a directeur sportif at the squad. That comeback is highly unlikely, but the roster has certainly been retooled with a view to reclaiming the Classics supremacy the team enjoyed during Tommeke’s career.

Jasper Stuyven, Dylan van Baarle and Laurenz Rex are the most striking incoming signings, while young Paul Magnier’s élan and late season burst of wins has reinforced Soudal-QuickStep’s hopes that they already have Boonen’s successor in their ranks. 

The staff has been reinforced with Classics experts Niki Terpstra, Sep Vanmarcke and Tim Declercq. In some respects, the team’s clock has been reset to 2015, even if CEO Jurgen Foré insisted this was partly a quirk of this year’s transfer market. 

“For 2026, there weren’t many climbers on the market, but for 2027, there will be,” he said in August, though he conceded that the team’s focus was shifting. “It hurt that we couldn’t really make our mark in the Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix this year.”

The underlying reason for the overhaul is well documented. Remco Evenepoel’s departure for Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe has not only seen Soudal-QuickStep lose its best rider; it has also forced a hard reset of the squad’s objectives.

Before Evenepoel’s arrival in 2019, QuickStep’s success rested on two key planks: a deep squad for the cobbled Classics and a stable of rapid sprinters. Like an NFL squad built around a powerful running game, Patrick Lefevere saw little reason to deviate from the tried and trusted playbook, especially after he had been burned by ill-fated GC signings like José Rujano.

Evenepoel’s outrageous talent and magnetic personality changed all that, and the squad was quickly remoulded in his image. Soudal came on board as title sponsor in 2023 expressly to get in the Evenepoel business, and as his Grand Tour ambitions grew, the team’s focus shifted more fully from spring to summer. Riders like Philippe Gilbert, Fabio Jakobsen, Kasper Asgreen, Bob Jungels and Julian Alaphilippe departed during the Evenepoel era, while the marquee signings were primarily riders who could help him in the high mountains, most notably Mikel Landa.

On the cobbles, however, QuickStep slid towards irrelevance after years of hegemony. The team have won the Tour of Flanders eight times, but they haven’t made the podium since Asgreen’s 2021 victory. They won Paris-Roubaix six times, but they haven’t made the podium since Gilbert’s 2019 triumph. 

The drift continued in 2025, where they could only salvage Tim Merlier’s Scheldeprijs victory from a cobbled Classics campaign dominated by Tadej Pogacar, Mathieu van der Poel and Mads Pedersen.

Now that Evenepoel has departed, Soudal-QuickStep find themselves refocusing on the cobbles. Nostalgia for the heady days of the self-styled Wolf Pack, when they generally outnumbered and outflanked allcomers in the finale of the Classics, has led to enthusiasm about the idea – but can their revamped squad really make an impression against Van der Poel and Pogacar? 

At first glance, Soudal-QuickStep’s 2026 Classics unit is a significant upgrade on recent years, but there are caveats. Stuyven’s palmarès features Milan-San Remo, Omloop Het Nieuwsblad and Kuurne-Brussel-Kuurne, and though he hasn’t been a prolific winner, he has been consistent, serving as a redoubtable foil for Mads Pedersen at Lidl-Trek. 

In QuickStep’s previous iteration, Stuyven is exactly the kind of rider who would have thrived by moving to the team, much like Philippe Gilbert’s career was revived in 2017. It remains to be seen, however, if the same kind of renaissance is possible in the cycling of 2026.

Van Baarle, a former Paris-Roubaix winner, brings enormous savvy and experience, but an early Omloop win notwithstanding, the Dutchman’s tenure at Visma was ruined by repeated illness and injury. A fully fit Van Baarle is a serious addition, but at 33, there is no guarantee that he can recapture his 2022 form.

Yves Lampaert remains in place, and the Belgian is the natural road captain for Soudal-QuickStep on the cobbles. Like so many others, however, he has seen his own prospects of winning big in the Spring contract steadily in the Pogacar-Van der Poel era.

If Soudal-QuickStep are to secure cobbled Classics success in 2026, however, the most likely avenue looks to be through their fast men. Tim Merlier was second in Gent-Wevelgem last year and he offers the squad an obvious focal point for that race, even if much will depend on how (or whether) Van der Poel and Mads Pedersen take on the event.

The most intriguing element in Soudal-QuickStep’s Classics picture, of course, is the rapidly improving Magnier. The Frenchman showcased his potential on the cobbles with second at Omloop Het Nieuwsblad but he struggled in March and April.

A mid-season switch in coach and training programme looked to pay dividends, as he scorched the earth in sprints in Slovakia, Croatia and Guangxi to end the season on 19 wins. Still only 21, Magnier is still finding himself as a rider, but his rapid finish and his ability to withstand some rough and technical terrain has drawn obvious in-house comparisons with Boonen.

It’s worth bearing in mind, however, that 20 years ago, Boonen was able to develop as an apprentice to men like Johan Museeuw and Paolo Bettini. Magnier, by contrast, will be fast-tracked to leadership next Spring. The experience will stand to him, of course, but it’s surely a touch too soon to go head-to-head with Van der Poel et al in the Monuments.

Although Evenepoel raced with Soudal-QuickStep until Il Lombardia, the cultural shift in the team seemed to begin the moment his Red Bull move was announced in August. That same week, Magnier notched up a victory at the Tour de Pologne and then kept on winning relentlessly all the way to China.

Merlier, meanwhile, had already reeled in a hefty haul of wins in the early part of the season. By year’s end, Soudal-QuickStep’s sprint tandem would clock up 35 wins between them, and their prodigious output meant that the team’s total of 54 wins was bettered only by the record-setting UAE Team Emirates-XRG on 97.

Bunch sprints will again provide the most fertile terrain for Soudal-QuickStep in 2026. Magnier’s bottom line might drop off if he is dispatched to more WorldTour races, but wherever he rides, he is quick enough to get into double figures again next season.

Merlier, meanwhile, continues to be the most underrated of sprinters, quietly going about the business of winning with the minimum of fuss. The Belgian’s rare ability to sprint without a dedicated train – flagged by Marcel Kittel during the Tour de France – made him the ideal complement to Evenepoel in a Grand Tour team. 

It will be fascinating to see how Merlier fares with presumably more resources at his disposal in 2026. If Magnier is still a work in progress, then Merlier is already the finished article, competing on the same exalted plane as Jonathan Milan and Jasper Philipsen. After nabbing two stages on minimal support at this year’s Tour, one imagines Merlier will again be given the nod to lead the line at La Grande Boucle next summer.

The addition of Alberto Dainese, meanwhile, gives Soudal-QuickStep a third viable option in bunch finishes. It’s a throwback to yesteryear, like when they had Sam Bennett, Fabio Jakobsen and Mark Cavendish on the same sprint depth chart in 2021. The return to the old template is clear.

Evenepoel gave QuickStep their first Grand Tour victory in 2022 and their first Tour de France podium in 2024, but their GC aspirations will be decidedly more modest next year. Mikel Landa remains in situ, but at this point in his career, stage wins rather than podium finishes look like the summit of his ambition.

Solid climbers Filippo Zana and Stef Cras have been added to the roster, but like Mont Ventoux winner Valentin Paret-Peintre, they will aspire to picking up a stage win at Grand Tours rather than lining up with any serious designs on the general classification.

The development of Ilan Van Wilder will be especially intriguing to follow now that he is freed from his previous duties in support of Evenepoel. His pugnacious display at Mont Ventoux on the Tour and his surprise bronze medal in the Worlds time trial were a reminder of his talent.

Indeed, Van Wilder’s situation perhaps captures the Soudal-QuickStep reboot in microcosm. For at least the past four years, Evenepoel was the team’s centre of gravity, with everything revolving around his ambition and his personality. His departure sees the team return to the flatter leadership structure it employed in yesteryear, and men like Van Wilder will have more opportunities than they had before. The question is whether they can take them.

Whatever way you stack it up, losing Evenepoel will be a net negative for Soudal-QuickStep in 2026. He offered guaranteed success as one of the very best riders in the world, part of that increasingly elite cadre straining to keep pace with Pogacar. 

Soudal-QuickStep have nobody close to that rarefied level, at least in the here and now. But while the apparent return to their Classics roots is the headline news this winter, the potential for the future, personified by Magnier above all, is what intrigues. 

For better or for ill, 2026 will be a season of transition, but however it plays out, Soudal-QuickStep’s will be a story worth watching.