Remco Evenepoel is likely to target the 2026 Tour de France, despite the limited time trialling, but his new Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe team opted to keep a low profile on the day of the route presentation and avoided revealing who will lead their team next July.
Evenepoel is currently in southern Germany and Austria at the Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe off-season get-together. Due to UCI rules, he is under contract with Soudal-QuickStep until the end of the year, but is allowed to start working with his new team. Some social media posts on Thursday showed Red Bull riders and staff visiting the Red Bull Athlete Performance Centre in Salzburg, taking helicopter trips and testing their F1 car Pit Stop times.
Evanepoel is spending time with his new teammates, including fellow Grand Tour contenders Primož Roglič, Florian Lipowitz and young Italian Giulio Pellizzari. The Red Bull management is no doubt working on their race plans for 2026, but opted not to immediately reveal them after seeing the 2026 Tour de France route.
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"We look at the Tour de France route with the GC in mind," the team's new Chief of Sports Zak Dempster, said in a very brief statement issued by Red Bull.
"Although, there are plenty of stages that suit our racing style and plays to the strengths of many of our riders. We’ll now wait for the routes of the other Grand Tours before finalising our season plans for the team leaders."
Evenepoel and Red Bull no doubt noticed the limited amount of time trialling and the tough final mountain stages to L'Alpe d'Huez, perhaps sparking their hesitancy to commit to targeting the Tour.
The 2026 Tour starts with a 19km team time trial in Barcelona, but only includes one rolling 26km individual time trial on stage 16 on the shores of Lake Geneva overlooking Switzerland.
Evenepoel won the 33km time trial in this year's Tour, gaining 16 seconds on Tadej Pogačar and 1:21 on Jonas Vingegaard. He eventually left the race to fatigue, but his time trialling skills give him an advantage, while his climbing ability is not yet at the same level as Pogačar and Vingegaard.
Evenepoel's only consolation is that he and Red Bull could win the opening team time trial and so pull on the first yellow jersey of the 2026 Tour, but a lot of climbing and hard racing follow, limiting his chances against Pogačar and Vingegaard.
