Team Visma | Lease a Bike set to phase out use of controversial control room that was banned at Tour de France

Team Visma | Lease a Bike has announced they will no longer rely on their control room setup during races.

Originally, the team intended to use the control room during last year’s Tour de France to analyze the race in real-time and make strategic decisions based on the data.

The control room allowed the team to monitor the race from multiple camera angles, providing detailed insights into the strategies of rival teams—whether they were preparing to attack or riding defensively. Such information would have been invaluable to team leaders, who otherwise rely on limited perspectives from the team car behind the peloton. With the control room, leaders could focus solely on managing their riders without the need for additional communication channels.

However, the UCI reviewed the legality of the control room system and ultimately prohibited its use during the Tour.

Looking ahead to 2025, the team plans to use their control van sparingly and not at race locations.

“In this winter period, we evaluated the project,” Head of Performance Mathieu Heijboer explained to WielerFlits and others. “One of the conclusions is that the added value of taking a mobile bus is not very great. The Control Room van will therefore hardly be seen again next year. But the project will remain. We are going to create a space in our high performance center in Den Bosch. All technology is present there, we have good internet connection and we can communicate with the shift leader cars.”