Ganna, Onley, Arensman, Bernal... - Who was the rider who contributed the most towards Netcompany INEOS' 2026 success

Netcompany INEOS started 2026 with a new title sponsor, a renewed squad and a clear idea: race with more freedom and win more often. It worked. The team finished the year with 36 victories, and they came from almost everyone in the roster.

The pace was set early. INEOS had 18 wins by the start of May, eight more than at the same point of 2025. Filippo Ganna caught Wout van Aert 100 metres from the line at Dwars door Vlaanderen. Dorian Godon, in his first year with the team, won seven races. Andrew August, only 20 when he won, took a WorldTour stage and later the Czech Tour. Axel Laurance had four wins before mid-April.

However, the biggest races were harder. At the Tour de France the team missed the opening team time trial by eight seconds after a puncture and went home without a stage win. No rider reached the podium of a Grand Tour, and the best results were the fourth place of Thymen Arensman at the Giro d’Italia and the sixth of Oscar Onley at the Vuelta a España.

That leaves a team that won a lot without a clear leading face, and one that has just lost its most recognisable rider, with Ganna leaving for Lidl-Trek. So who carried the season? The UCI individual ranking updated on 27 October gives a tight answer. Arensman leads the team with 1,499.8 points, followed by Ganna (1,433.8), Onley (1,364.3), Godon (1,311), Egan Bernal (1,158.8) and Kevin Vauquelin (1,050).

Arensman, 26, finished the year as the team’s best scorer without winning a race. UCI points reward Grand Tour and WorldTour stage race results far more than wins in smaller events, and he scored in nearly all the big ones.

His best moment came at the Giro, where he finished fourth overall. It is the best Grand Tour result of his career, after two sixth places at the same race in 2023 and 2024, and the best of any INEOS rider this year.

He lost third place to Jai Hindley on stage 19 and ended 37 seconds short of the podium. Earlier in the race he had been second to Ganna in the stage 10 time trial, 1:54 behind. He was also second to Ganna in the opening time trial of Tirreno-Adriatico and third overall at the Tour of the Alps, with Bernal second.

The Tour was less productive. After winning two stages in 2025, Arensman went looking for another one and was in the breakaway on three consecutive Alpine stages (18, 19 and 20). He did not win and finished 22nd overall. After the Giro he said “I barely had bad days”. That fits his whole season: no wins, but a place in the results of almost every race that mattered.

Ganna is second in the ranking, 66 points behind Arensman, but he took the most important wins of the team’s year. He won five races: the time trial on stage 3 of the Volta ao Algarve, the opening time trial of Tirreno-Adriatico, Dwars door Vlaanderen, the stage 10 time trial of the Giro and the Italian time trial championship.

Dwars door Vlaanderen was his first classics win. Wout van Aert had been alone at the front for much of the final 30 kilometres and Ganna caught him 100 metres from the line. At the Giro he covered the 42 kilometres between Viareggio and Massa at 54.9 km/h, the fastest time trial over 40 kilometres in the history of the three Grand Tours. In September he added the silver medal in the World Championships time trial in Montreal, 57 seconds behind Remco Evenepoel.

The Tour brought less. Ganna took the team to second place in the opening time trial, eight seconds behind Visma-Lease a Bike, after a puncture for Vauquelin disrupted the plan in the closing kilometres. His fifth place on stage 9 was the best individual stage result of the team in the whole race.

He had also been the team’s top scorer in 2025, but that will not repeat, because Lidl-Trek announced on 13 October that he joins them on a three-year deal, a year before his INEOS contract ended. The team loses its second-best scorer and the rider behind its most prestigious win of the season.

Onley arrived from Picnic PostNL after finishing fourth at the 2025 Tour, and his year was split in two. The first half was full of crashes. He abandoned Paris-Nice and the Tour de Romandie, and in June he went into a ravine on stage 6 of the Tour Auvergne-Rhone-Alpes. The crash dislocated his shoulder and kept him out of the Tour de France.

He came back at the Vuelta a Burgos in August. He won stage 2, beating Giulio Ciccone, held the lead for three days and ended second overall behind Felix Gall, with the points and mountains jerseys. “Up to this point it hadn’t been a good season”, he said after the stage.

At the Vuelta a España he was the team’s leader and finished sixth overall, 9:28 behind Enric Mas, winning the best young rider classification. He ended with 1,364.3 points, third on the team, even though he missed the Tour.

Godon, 30, had the best season of his career in his first year at INEOS. Decathlon did not retain him after 2025 and INEOS signed him on a three-year deal in August of that year. He won seven races, more than any teammate, and five of them were at WorldTour level: stage 7 of Paris-Nice, stages 1 and 3 of the Volta a Catalunya, and the prologue and stage 3 of the Tour de Romandie.

He also won the points classification at Catalunya. Two more wins came late, the Gran Premio del Lazio in September and Gran Piemonte on 8 October.

He is fourth in points because most of his wins came in stages and one-day races, which score less than general classification results in Grand Tours. His year was also uneven. At one point he had six abandons in seven race days, and he went four months without a win between Romandie and Lazio.

At Gran Piemonte he was dropped on the final climb, came back and sprinted to victory with Axel Laurance leading him out. “This is my best year”, he said afterwards.

Bernal, 29, won the Colombian road race title for the second year in a row in February and then lost weeks to a knee injury. He came back at the Tour of the Alps and finished second overall, then took fifth at Liege-Bastogne-Liege.

At the Giro he was tenth overall while working as a domestique for Arensman. At the Tour he finished 20th after several days in the breakaway in the last week, the best overall result of any INEOS rider in France. He also wore the green jersey for a day after the team time trial in Barcelona, because he was the fastest rider at the first checkpoint under the new rule.

Then he stopped. “This year, I decided to end my season after the Tour de France”, he said in October, when rumours about his retirement appeared. He has said his intention, for now, is to start 2027, and he has a contract until the end of 2029. He finished with 1,158.8 points, fifth on the team.

Vauquelin, 25, started well as a team leader. At Paris-Nice he finished fourth overall after crashes took out Onley and Carlos Rodriguez, and INEOS also won the team time trial and the team classification. He was 13th at Fleche Wallonne, a race where he had been second in 2024 and 2025.

The summer was harder. He was ill in June and finished the Tour 36th, after seventh place in 2025. His first win with the team came on 18 September, on the last stage of the Giro d’Abruzzo. He beat Mathys Rondel and took the overall title by two seconds. He ended with 1,050 points, sixth on the team.

Andrew August has five wins on the books, as many as Ganna.. August, who turned 21 in October, won stage 3 of the Volta a la Comunitat Valenciana in February and stage 6 of Itzulia Basque Country in April, his first WorldTour win.

In August he won two consecutive uphill stages in the Czech Tour and took the overall, with the points and young rider jerseys. “Winning the Czech Tour was a confirmation for me”, he said when Pinarello-Q36.5 announced his signing. He joins them on 1 January 2027 on a deal through 2029, so INEOS lose a rider who came to the team straight from the junior ranks.

Laurance, 25, had four wins before mid-April: stage 3 of the Tour de la Provence, stages 1 and 4 of Coppi e Bartali, where he was second overall, and stage 3 of Itzulia from the breakaway.

Others added smaller pieces. Sam Watson opened the team’s season with the prologue of the Tour Down Under, where Sam Welsford won stage 3 before leaving for Jayco AlUla after one year. Artem Shmidt won the Classique Dunkerque in May and will ride for NSN next season. The national time trial titles came from Ganna (Italy), Shmidt (United States), Tobias Foss (Norway) and Michal Kwiatkowski (Poland). Victor Langellotti won the time trial and road race titles of Monaco and joins XDS Astana.

Carlos Rodríguez is probably the biggest disappointment. At 25 he has been with the team since 2020 and has a fifth place at the 2023 Tour (with a stage win), a seventh place in 2024 and the 2024 Tour de Romandie title behind him. In 2026 he did not win a race. He was second at the Tour de la Provence in February and then worked for others: 23rd at Paris-Nice, 26th at Catalunya, 12th at Romandie and 20th at the Tour Auvergne-Rhone-Alpes.

INEOS left him out of the Tour. Sports director Imanol Erviti said it was “not a punishment” and linked it to an illness in early June and a build-up that was not straightforward. At Burgos he was 21st while Onley won a stage and finished second. At the Vuelta, where he had reportedly been promised leadership, Onley was the leader and Rodriguez ended 36th. He also did not finish the 2025 Tour.

The pattern is clear: his results have gone backwards since 2024 and 2026 did not change it. For a rider who was fifth at the Tour at 22, that is a worrying trend. Even so, INEOS have reportedly extended his contract until 2029.

It depends on the measure. By UCI points the answer is Arensman, by 66 points over Ganna, 135 over Onley and 189 over Godon. By wins it is Godon, with seven. By the weight of the victories it is Ganna, with a classic, a Grand Tour time trial and a world silver medal. None of them, nor Onley, Bernal or Vauquelin, could turn a good year into a stage at the Tour.

The squad that scored these points will look different in 2027. Ganna goes to Lidl-Trek, August to Pinarello-Q36.5, Welsford to Jayco AlUla, Shmidt to NSN and Langellotti to XDS Astana, while Bob Jungels and Ben Swift retire.

INEOS have already answered with a wave of signings: the climbers Harold Tejada and Markel Beloki, the junior world champion Benjamin Noval, Clement Champoussin, Joe Blackmore, James Shaw, Riley Sheehan, Javier Romo and Michael Valgren.

INEOS have not had a rider on a Grand Tour podium since Geraint Thomas finished third at the 2024 Giro, and 2026 repeated the pattern, with Arensman fourth at the Giro, Onley sixth at the Vuelta and no one in the top 19 at the Tour. With Arensman, Onley, Bernal and Vauquelin all still on the roster and a deeper group of mountain helpers around them, the main target for 2027 might be to get back onto a Grand Tour podium.