8 days for Tour de France start but at INEOS "it is not yet entirely clear who exactly will be going"

Team Visma | Lease a Bike and UAE Team Emirates - XRG are amongst the teams that have already confirmed their lineup for the Tour de France, but the reality is that a few teams, with just over a week left to the Grand Depart, do not yet have their plan fully agreed on. INEOS Grenadiers is actually one of them.

“Everything went smoothly there, so that was perfect. However, it is not yet entirely clear who exactly will be going to the Tour," Laurens de Plus said in an interview with IDLProCycling. The Tour's block has spent time training at altitude but there is open space for changes as the team doesn't come in as strictly chasing the overall classification as in the past decade.

De Plus, Thymen Arensman and Geraint Thomas will be going to the race to support Carlos Rodríguez in the battle for the overall classification and may split that with stage hunting. Michal Kwiatkowski, Tobias Foss and Filippo Ganna add more firepower to the lineup, but there is on paper one more spot to fill. Magnus Sheffield, Axel Laurance, Bob Jungels and Connor Swift should be the main figures to look at.

De Plus was third at the Volta ao Algarve, sixth at the Volta a Catalunya and did an amazing job for Filippo Ganna at Tirreno-Adriatico. The Belgian virtually assured his Tour presence in the spring after a set of great performances, even if his recent Tour de Suisse ended prematurely.

“We have a lot more freedom from the team management, which makes racing fun. The fact that this also makes us more attractive is a bonus. But we didn't have much choice, of course. We don't have Remco Evenepoel, Tadej Pogacar or Jonas Vingegaard," the 29-year old argues.

“We are reinventing ourselves, but to achieve success, we have to. For me, it will mainly be a matter of looking forward to that last week, but I want to support the lead riders as best I can. And the first week is obviously very important for Ganna.”