A new update has came on the UCI points rankings and it reveals Lotto Soudal starting to edge closer to maintenance, as some teams struggle to get valuable points - and EF Education-EasyPost are now the target as the American team struggles to bring in the points in a complicated 2022.
The update from Raúl Banqueri shows a smaller gap between Lotto Soudal and EF Education-Easy-Post - now at only 768 points - after Florian Vermeersch took a strong win at Antwerp Port Epic. Whilst the Belgian team are unlikely to score big points with the end of the Giro d'Italia, the American team who were expected to benefit from Hugh Carthy's GC ambitions won't aswell as Carthy sits in 18th place ahead of the final week of racing.
Lotto have scored so far in 2022 triple the points of EF Education, with even Israel - Premier Tech scoring 800 more points, also putting them in range of an attack later on in the season. Noticeably in the ranking is also apparent the rise of TotalEnergies after Julien Simon won both GP du Morbihan and the Tour de Finistère - putting them very close to the first place out of the teams provisionally at Pro Team level for 2023.
In the following update there will be the addition of the Giro d'Italia points, with GC and other classifications set to make a diffence - although perhaps not much towards the bottom of the ranking.
Relegation battle update: Lotto Soudal continues to close the gap thanks to Florian Vermeersch's victory at the Antwerp Port Epic. EF is already on the edge of the relegation zone and there is no sign of any kind of reaction from the team in the hunt for UCI points.
