Remco Evenepoel aiming for victory and yellow jersey at Paris-Nice team time-trial: "Gain some lead towards the weekend"

Today's team time-trial at Paris-Nice is going to be a very important day for the overall classification, creating differences before the arrival to the hills and mountains. Remco Evenepoel and Soudal - Quick-Step want to take the victory and get an early lead over their rivals.

“The regulations make it different, but then again they don't. On paper, the main focus of the course is at the beginning. This means that you should try to lose as few men as possible. After that it just becomes a kind of lead-out to the last three hundred meters," Evenepoel said in conversation with VTM. Like last year, it is a non-traditional format to the TTT, but one that should not see too many changes in the results.

"That's the only thing that changes: you can sacrifice men in the last two kilometers. But before that, you need to stay together as long as possible. Especially in a slightly descending section, you are stronger with five or six than alone or with two or three," he says. The Belgian team has riders that can ride quite fast uphill in the hilly sections, but also powerhouses that can thrive in the fasts sections. The time-trial World Champion thrives in both and is meant to be the key figure of the team today.

“We have a lot of men with experience, so I think we can show ambition," he argues. Ultimately, the goal will be to take time on the competition and specially Primoz Roglic, so that Evenepoel can adapt a different and more defensive tactics throughout the race. "We are going to try to win that stage and hope that we can gain some lead towards the weekend and the mountain stages.”