Astana DS looks behind the curtain of their successful 2025 campaign: "We have a data analyst who tells us which races are easier to take points in"

XDS Astana Team wasn't in a good place at the end of last season, looking up at 18th placed Cofidis with a deficit of nearly 5.000 UCI points. Even with the arrival of Chinese sponsor XDS and big changes to roster, the team need to be among the best in the world, something they wouldn't even dare to think about for many years.

Yet they made the impossible happen, and after four months, their vicitm on UCI ranking - Team Picnic PostNL is within 1.000 UCI points and on-going races suggest this gap will further reduce. "Why shouldn’t we be confident? We’re a better quality team now. We don’t have a big, big star, but we have riders with the capacity to win races, experienced riders who’ve won in the past, and it’s up to us to adapt the strategy," the team’s sports director Dmitriy Fofonov told Rouleur.

"The team is working well, is motivated from the beginning of the season - we’ve shown that in races - and when we go to races we’re there to be in the best position to win, otherwise we stay at home. When you’re in the front, you have no problem scoring points."

It is remarkable that Astana's biggest star is... well there's not really one. Yet riders like Cristian Scaroni, Simone Velasco, Clément Champoussin, Harold Tejada or Mike Teunissen have proven that through consistency and smaller races, you can supplement having a superstar in your ranks. "If you look at the composition of the team, if you don’t have a Remco, Vingegaard or Van der Poel, you need to adapt, to be realistic," Fofonov went on.

The key to Astana's is ability to maximise points scored in smaller races through wise distribution of team's leaders. We can see an example of that at the Tour of Turkey where Wout Poels and Harold Martín López are on their way to secure a 1-2 in general classification and over 400 UCI points when we account stage results.

"We have some data and a data analyst who works with the team more and more and tells us which races are easier to take points in. In some races, they say: 'OK, put our best riders there to collect points and then we will have more chances to win.' As directors we need to adapt in the race as well when you’re racing for points - the strategy is a little different. If you race for victory, you take the responsibility to take a risk, but sometimes we prefer to be seventh or eighth."

By the end of this week, the Kazakh formation is inevitably heading towards outscoring their whole 2024 season (6.656 points), and maybe even 2023 season (7.134 points) in one go. An incredible progress, you could say. But it was achieved through hard work and necessary shift in mentality.

"We’re confident we’re moving forward," Fofonov said. "Let’s go like we’re going now and there’s not a reason why it won’t work. The other teams aren’t sleeping - it's a competition - but we try to show ourselves in the best way."

If Astana can carry on this momentum, saving WorldTour license will soon become a reality. Although with the accumulated points, they'd be already in VIP position for automatic wild cards. Not that this possibility is even being considered... "If we don’t do it [remain in World Tour], what?" Fofonov doesn't want to hear about such scenario. "To be honest, I don't think about that. We’re thinking that we’re going to do it."