“We’re not avoiding anyone” – Red Bull reveal Remco Evenepoel wanted early-season test against Tadej Pogacar

From the outside, Remco Evenepoel’s early-season calendar could be misread as caution. A February stage race without Tadej Pogacar or Jonas Vingegaard on the startline is easily framed as convenience rather than confrontation.

Inside Red Bull - BORA - hansgrohe, the thinking was the opposite.

“We’re not avoiding anyone,” said Zak Dempster, explaining why Evenepoel targeted the UAE Tour as part of his 2026 build-up in conversation with Cycling News. The original motivation, he revealed, was simple: Evenepoel expected Tadej Pogacar to be there.

That clarification matters. It strips away the idea that Red Bull are managing Evenepoel away from danger, or that his electric start to the season has been engineered in a vacuum. The intent was to measure, not to hide.

Evenepoel’s opening weeks in Red Bull colours have already set a tone. Wins across the Challenge Mallorca series, control in the team time trial, and a commanding overall victory at the Volta a Comunitat Valenciana have provided visible confirmation that the move has landed cleanly.

Dempster is keen to stress that those results were not achieved against soft opposition.

“The win in Valencia was against a top-class field,” he said, pointing to riders such as Joao Almeida as genuine reference points rather than placeholders. The UAE Tour, even without Pogacar and Vingegaard, remains “a really strong start list” and “an important test”.

In other words, Red Bull are not treating February form as decoration. They are treating it as information.

One of the clearest threads running through Red Bull’s 2026 planning is a resistance to over-managing Evenepoel’s path. Rather than insulating him in controlled environments, the team has leaned into racing as a primary development tool.

“You get a hell of a lot out of that last 45 minutes of a race where you’re in the fight,” Dempster said. “Maybe even more than an extra week at altitude in January.”

That philosophy helps explain why Evenepoel added races in Mallorca, why his form has been sharpened in competition, and why the absence of an early altitude camp is seen internally as a feature rather than a flaw.

Contrary to modern orthodoxy, Red Bull believes a rider can reach a very high level without disappearing onto a mountain at the first opportunity. The work, for now, has been done on the road.

There is also a quieter, but no less important, foundation beneath this start. For the first time in several seasons, Evenepoel came through the winter without crashes or setbacks.

“Just being able to get on your bike every day at 9.30 and come home for lunch,” Dempster said, describing what he called the biggest difference. Stability, rather than reinvention, has been the cornerstone.

That clean run has allowed Red Bull to implement a back-to-basics approach around a new coach, a new performance structure and a rider entering what many consider the prime window of his career.

None of this changes the ultimate measure of success. Evenepoel’s early-season authority has already prompted questions about whether he is peaking too soon, but Red Bull’s messaging has been consistent: this is not the destination.

After the UAE Tour, Evenepoel will head to altitude with co-leader Florian Lipowitz of the Tour de France, before moving through Catalunya and the Ardennes Classics. Pogacar will re-enter the picture soon enough.

The early signal, though, is important. Evenepoel wanted Pogacar on the startline. He was looking for the confrontation, not sidestepping it.

For a team intent on challenging the sport’s current hierarchy rather than orbiting it, that mindset may be as significant as any result already on the board.