'Close to perfection' - Evenepoel hails first win with Red Bull in Mallorca

The Belgian opted to start his season in Mallorca expressly for this 23.8km team time trial, which served as an early dress rehearsal for the opening stage of the Tour de France in Barcelona. Evenepoel was joined by co-leader Florian Lipowitz and the spine of Red Bull’s Tour team here, and they duly claimed the win, albeit just four seconds ahead of a well-drilled Movistar squad.

“I think it was not a hard course in terms of the elevation, but a TTT is always pretty tough and pretty hard,” Evenepoel told Eurosport. “But I think we had a pretty structured plan, and it turned out well, so we have to be happy. 

“We knew that the way back was going to be the most important with the headwind and the small kicker at 3km to go. We knew we wanted to make the biggest difference there, and I think we did so I’m very happy with that. With the new teammate, I think it’s good for the morale.”

In his Soudal-QuickStep era, Evenepoel always raced time trials in a short-sleeved skinsuit after wind tunnel testing in 2023 suggested he didn’t need to cover his forearms. The discovery prompted a memorable Het Nieuwsblad headline suggesting that he had “fast skin.”

In his first outing at Red Bull, however, it was striking that Evenepoel opted for a long-sleeved skinsuit, but everything else was business as usual, with the world time trial champion putting in long, long turns on the front.

Even so, Red Bull had only the third best time at the midpoint, two seconds down on Jayco-AlUla. In the closing kilometres, meanwhile, they were down to the minimum four riders, and it appeared that Evenepoel had to temper his effort to keep the quartet together on the course’s one significant incline.

“Everybody knew we were going to go really paced until that U-turn,” he said. “Then it was about 13km to go, and we had to go really flat out until the climb and especially on the climb – well, on the false flat… We had to go as fast as possible and winning is winning. It was a really fast TTT, and I think we did it perfectly.”

The race was run off according to traditional team time trial rules, meaning the clock stopped on the fourth rider across the line, whereas the opening team time trial at the Tour will see each rider timed individually. Evenepoel was circumspect when asked what lessons he could draw for July from Thursday’s display.

“Every parcours is different so it’s difficult to say what we can and cannot improve,” Evenepoel said. “But what we did today was really close to perfection for this TTT. 

“We handled the critical situation on top of the climb quite well because there it was a looking a bit uncertain to finish with four guys. But I think Nico Denz was on a very strong day, he did some strong pulls, and everybody did what he had to do. For today, it was close to perfect and way to go for the Tour.”

Evenepoel will race twice more at the Challenge Mallorca, lining up at the Trofeo Serra Tramuntana on Friday before tackling the Trofeo Andratx - Pollença at the weekend.