Remco Evenepoel has finally moved to Red Bull, but can he ever win the Tour de France?

So there it is. Remco Evenepoel is officially going to ride for Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe in 2026. After months of speculation that dates back to as early as last year, his early departure from Soudal-QuickStep has finally been agreed. He gets the move he wanted.

And this is what he wanted. He and his entourage have had to go through lengthy negotiations, constant media questioning, and spend a large amount of money to get him out of his contract. It's not something you would do unless you really, really wanted.

The reason he wants it so much? Well, there are many, some personal, some probably financial too, but the main motivation is this: he wants to win the Tour de France. As a GC rider, and a Belgian one at that – the nation that hasn't won the Tour since 1976 – that is Evenepoel's driving goal.

So naturally, a big part of his move is about that. He wants to move to a team with more budget, more Grand Tour-winning experience, better climbing domestiques, a management focused on this one goal of the Tour de France.

But is any of this actually going to improve his chances of winning the race? His next attempt may still be some 11 months away, and Evenepoel doesn't even officially join Red Bull until January, but the preparations start here, today – they probably have already started – with that goal in mind, maybe for next year, and maybe for years to come.

As the dust settles on his signature, let's analyse how his chances have actually changed.

The team

One of the enduring challenges Evenepoel faced at QuickStep was that they just aren't a GC team. They tried to sign climbers around him, sure, but at their core, QuickStep is a Belgian Classics team. The management and DS team is made up of Classics riders and hardy Flemish types. Not Grand Tour winners.

Evenepoel chose to go to the team as a young rider who had been discovered by Patrick Lefevere, and – for a long time – they had a positive relationship, with it seeming like the team was happy to try and transform themselves for their Belgian star boy.

However, three years on from his Vuelta a España win, they're just not a GC team to compete with the super teams that turn up to the Tour. When your best climbing domestique is Valentin Paret-Peintre, whilst your rivals can count on Simon Yates and João Almeida, it's just not good enough.

Red Bull, on the other hand, are – after their own transformation – more of a focused GC team. The team completely floundered through the Classics, which isn't ideal for Evenepoel, who is also a Liège-Bastogne-Liège winner, but they came good for the big races this year, finishing on the podium of the Tour.

With the arrival of big sports marketing brand Red Bull, the Tour has become a main focus for Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe, because it's simply the biggest race and the biggest goal, so bringing in Evenepoel is as much about their desire to win the Tour as it is about his.

When Evenepoel arrives at Red Bull this winter, he's reportedly bringing Mattia Cattaneo with him from QuickStep, and will also be able to count on the likes of Primož Roglič and Florian Lipowitz as supporters, not to mention Dani Martínez, Finn Fisher-Black and Giulio Pelizzari. It's not a UAE super team, but it's a big step up from QuickStep.

At a race like the Tour, where it has become so much about teams on top of individual strength, having this stronger, deeper team is going to be a huge help. You can already imagine Evenepoel fully supported in the mountains in a way that he hasn't been at QuickStep.

In this sense, his Tour chances have shot up with this move.

The equipment

A quick word on this, as a time trialist, equipment will be key for Evenepoel, particularly as TTs continue to play such an important role in the Tour.

For Evenepoel, this move means staying on Specialized, the only brand he's ever ridden, and that was undoubtedly a hugely influential factor in his move. Even when the rumours suggested that a move to Ineos Grenadiers was also a possibility, that was including a switch to Specialized for the British team. Evenepoel just isn't going to ride anything else.

So on that front, the move should be relatively straightforward with no step up or down in terms of the bike. It's not as completely simple as just rebadging a bike, and he will have to go through all of his position, components and aerodynamics testing again so Red Bull can have the full dataset, but it's as smooth a change as he could hope for.

This is a positive thing for his TT chances, which is where he'll make the biggest gains in Grand Tours.

The competition

So he's improved his team, he's kept his trusted equipment, but there is one thing Evenepoel simply can't control, and that's the competition at the Tour de France. At the moment, that competition is Tadej Pogačar and Jonas Vingegaard, the riders who have finished first and second in the last five Tours de France, and seem to have an iron grip on the race.

Up until now, Evenepoel hasn't looked like he has the ability to compete with those two. He can – and did in 2023 – finish third, that's clear, and obviously he wants more, but even with a better team and support around him, there may be an uncomfortable truth to face: that he just doesn't have it against those riders.

Whilst teams are important, as we've said, individual ability is what wins the race, and with a rider like Pogačar seemingly so far above everyone else when it comes to the Tour, it's not easy to imagine Evenepoel beating him. Even if Evenepoel had UAE-levels of support, even rode for the team, you might still bet on the Slovenian.

Of course, nothing is certain, and if Pogačar's threats to retire soon come good, or he misses a Tour, or Vingegaard is injured again, then the door opens up for Evenepoel, and it's absolutely conceivable that the circumstances could come together for him to win. But if the dominant duo are healthy and motivated for Tours to come, the ceiling for Evenepoel might just be third, something he has already achieved.

What is certain is that he now has a much better chance of winning the other Grand Tours, to take a first Giro d'Italia title or add a Vuelta title to his 2022 victory, and that is clearly a positive which would fill out and round out his already impressive palmarès.

However, this is a move that is all about the Tour de France, both for Evenepoel, his new team, and the sponsors that have made it all happen. And there are many signs that point towards the Belgian's chances improving.

But at the same time, it's a gamble – it's wagering everything on this bold move, without any guarantee of success. Both parties can control a lot, and they've done their best to put themselves in the best position possible, but in the era of Pogačar and Vingegaard's Tour de France domination, there is still a very big chance that Remco Evenepoel will never win the Tour de France.

Evenepoel had to be in it to win it, and he had to make this move to give himself the best chance, but make no mistake – achieving what he wants is still going to be a huge, career-defining challenge.