Remco Evenepoel starts 2026 with a Tour de France test run - 'That's why we're here'

Remco Evenepoel’s first competitive outing in Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe colours will be a test ride for the most pressing appointment on his 2026 calendar. This year’s Tour de France starts with a team time trial in Barcelona, and Evenepoel sets out on the road to the Grand Départ with a team time trial in Mallorca on Thursday.

The Challenge Mallorca has long tailored its menu to the appetites of competing teams at this early point in the season. On its inception in 1992, it was notionally a stage race, though even then it allowed riders the chance to pick and choose what stages they actually raced.

These days, the event is simply a collection of one-day races where teams and riders can select their own level of engagement, but for 2026, the organisation has introduced a novelty. For the first time, Thursday’s Trofeo Ses Salines will be held as a team time trial rather than as a road race.

The rationale behind the decision is evident. With the team time trial making its return to the Tour de France this year, the Challenge Mallorca organisation sensed an opportunity. The calendar won’t offer squads too many chances of a dress rehearsal between now and July, and so the Challenge Mallorca has opted to present one at the very start of the year.

When the novelty was announced, there was speculation that a number of top teams would take up the invitation to have a test run for Barcelona, but instead Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe are the only squad to bring their Tour de France leaders to Mallorca.

Although Evenepoel will also line out at the Trofeo Serra Tramuntana and the Trofeo Andratx in the coming days, his very presence at this Challenge Mallorca owes more or less everything to the team time trial.

It helps, of course, that Mallorca has long been Red Bull’s preferred training base, and Ralph Denk’s squad clearly figured they would be foolish to pass up on putting Evenepoel and Florian Lipowitz together in a team time trial. 

Other riders from the likely Tour squad, namely Mattia Cattaneo, Gianni Moscon, Maxim Van Gils and Nico Denz will line up for Thursday’s time trial, as well as the Giro-bound Aleksandr Vlasov. The directeurs sportifs in the team car on Thursday will be the same men leading the team at the Tour, Klaas Lodewyck and Patxi Villa. 

“Everyone knows that the first day is going to be a big day with the TTT,” Evenepoel told Daniel Benson this week. “For us it’s going to be a really important one, and that’s also why we’re here, for the TTT, with quite a strong group, and to try and have this rhythm, with the speed and the tactics.”

It’s still a preliminary rehearsal rather than a final dry run, of course, given that both the route and the rules will be different at the Tour. In Barcelona on July 4, Evenepoel, Lipowitz et al will face a 19km course that includes two short, sharp climbs up Montjuïc in the finale, whereas Thursday’s 23.4km test from Ses Salines to Colònia de Sant Jordi is a flatter and less technical affair.

That seems to be a deliberate choice from an organisation that was roundly criticised for a dangerous parcours at last year’s cancelled Trofeo Andratx. “At this time of year and with the possibility of rain, neither we nor the teams or riders want to take any more risks than necessary,” was the word from the organisation to Het Laatste Nieuws.

The other key difference regards the timing system. On Thursday, the clock will stop on the third rider across the finish line in Colònia de Sant Jordi, whereas on July 4, riders will be timed individually. 

That makes the Tour’s opening stage a high-speed lead-out into the climbs of Montjuïc, where Evenepoel and Lipowitz will then have their first internal duel for leadership of Red Bull. On Thursday, by contrast, Evenepoel and his new teammate will be rowing at the same stroke rate from start to finish in a more traditional team time trial format.

Red Bull will, of course, carve out some time ahead of the Tour to run their final selection through their team time trial paces in training, but this is an early opportunity to build an understanding in the discipline. It will also provide some insight on how best to integrate Evenepoel’s individual gifts and astonishing aerodynamism into a collective effort.

Indeed, collecting information will be a key part of the exercise. Although Evenepoel raced on Specialized bikes throughout his tenure at Soudal-QuickStep, the data accumulated remains the property of his old team, which meant the Belgian headed to Morgan Hill in October for wind tunnel testing under the auspices of his new squad. Thursday gives the team a first look under the bonnet in competition. 

“Remco is already winning time trials by a comfortable margin, but we are working hard to extend his superiority even further,” Red Bull’s head of engineering Dan Bigham told L’Équipe. “The team has a world-class expert in every field. We just want to do everything better than before.”

Although UAE Team Emirates-XRG are also in the field on Thursday, Tadej Pogacar has not made the trek to Mallorca to sample the discipline. Evenepoel and Lipowitz are the only Tour contenders to do so, though Tudor Pro Cycling have made stage 1 of the Tour a target this year and it’s no coincidence that new signing Stefan Küng starts his season at the Trofeo Ses Salines.

With Evenepoel, Lipowitz and the spine of their Tour squad in the line-up, Red Bull are strongly favoured to claim the spoils on Thursday. And, as Het Nieuwsblad pointed out this week, history is on their side: in three of the past four seasons, Evenepoel has won on his first race day of the season. It would be a surprise if he doesn’t add to that sequence here.