The road has decided Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe's team leadership for the Tour de France; Florian Lipowitz has confirmed that he will now ride to help Remco Evenepoel finish on the podium in Paris.
There will be no need for Evenepoel to speak out about Lipowitz not working for him or demand a team meeting; the German rider has publicly committed to riding for Evenepoel.
"The main goal is to have Remco on the podium in Paris," Lipowitz said clearly during a video call with the media during the rest day in the French Alps.
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"The main goal will be for sure to get on the podium with Remco. Maybe it's for second place, and it will be super hard last week, but I think we showed that we have a super strong team here and for sure we will fight until Paris."
Team Ralph Denk said before the start of the Tour that Evenepoel and Lipowitz were joint team leaders but admitted that one of them will eventually emerge as the team's protected rider as they "fight it out between themselves on the road."
There was some tension in the first week, with Evenepoel letting out his frustration that Lipowitz did not lead him out in the sprint to the line on stage 6 to Gavarnie-Gèdre in the Pyrenees.
However, Evenepoel slowly gained seconds on Lipowitz in the first half of the Tour and gained a significant 1:08 by winning stage 15 to Plateau de Solaison. Evenepoel is second overall, 5:00 down on Tadej Pogačar, but leads Lipowitz, who lies fifth overall, by 1:48, who is fifth overall.
Evenepoel is the favourite to win Tuesday's rolling 26.1km time trial near Lake Geneva and so should gain even more time on his teammate and so further strengthen his protected leadership role.
"With tomorrow's time trial, he will have the best chance for that," Lipowitz said, accepting that Red Bull will now race for one leader, with little thought of a second podium or top-five place.
"We will see during the last week, but I think the main role is to have one guy on the podium. Isaac del Toro and Paul Seixas are super strong, and Juan Ayuso is not far off. I was suffering most of them yesterday, so I know. Tadej could also influence the fight for the podium because he seems to be trying to help Del Toro.
"In the end, we are teammates, so we support each other. We will fight together, and we will have to fight until Paris. We are teammates, we will support each other, and we will do our best."
Lipowitz suggested that he is as strong, if not stronger, than in the 2025 Tour de France when he emerged to finish third behind Pogačar and Jonas Vingegaard, but his rivals and Evenepoel are a little better.
"I think my performance so far is a bit better than last year. Yesterday I did one of my best 30-minute efforts, so I think I'm on a good level. But I think just the whole level of the bunch has increased. I'm quite happy with the performance so far," Lipowitz said.
"Remco did a really impressive performance. We were super happy to have a stage victory here at the Tour. The whole team knew that he was in really good shape; there was no doubt about that.
"It's the best way to go into the second rest day. For sure, we will have a chat later this evening, and we will plan the upcoming week."
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