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Coming Sunday, Paris-Roubaix will be the icing on the cake of the cobbled classics season. For masses of cycling fans around the world the 'secteurs pavés' are the pinnacle of the cycling season. In the lead up to the 'Hell of the North' we're focussing on Soudal - Quick Step today, because something has changed within the team that has been the team to beat in cobbled classics as long as we can remember... 

To start off, we made a list with teams that won the French monument the most often since 2000. Interestingly, only one (still existing) team has won Paris-Roubaix more than once: Soudal - Quick Step won it six times. Tom Boonen became record holder in 2012 after winning it for the fourth time (2005, 2008, 2009, 2012), Niki Terpstra won it in 2014 and Philippe Gilbert won in Roubaix in 2019.

The Belgian squad of Patrick Lefevere has been the most successful team in Paris-Roubaix in the same period. They won it the most, had the most podium spots and the most top 10 classifications. All by far, even. Does that make them the favorites for this year's 120th edition? Well... No. Not directly. Something has changed within the Soudal - Quick Step-team. Where the blue and white equipe has been the team to watch in the (cobbled) spring classics since its inception in 2003, the team's focus has changed over the past few years. With the retirement of Tom Boonen, the departure of riders like Gilbert and Terpstra and new exceptional talents like Remco Evenepoel, Fabio Jakobsen and Tim Merlier, who have different qualities, the focus has partly shifted from cobbled classics to stage races and bunchsprints. And that does echo in the team's results, both in stage races, where Evenepoel is nothing less than a sensation, in bunch sprints, where Jakobsen and Merlier are winning races and stages at the highest level against the best competition, and in cobbled classics, where the team is no longer the undisputed number one.

For example: in one day races Jumbo-Visma is the new team to beat. The Dutch squad, with dedicated one day race-specialists like Wout van Aert and Christophe Laporte has been winning the most races and scored the most podiums this year. Behind them, Soudal - Quick Step has been surpassed by another Belgian team, Intermarché - Circus - Wanty, who are noting the most top tens in one day races of all teams by quite a margin.

Also, in terms of experience, there are other teams with more baggage in a race where experience, expertise and knowledge counts the most. The seven riders from French side TotalEnergies combined have ridden Paris-Roubaix 49 times, with Daniel Oss, Edvald Boasson Hagen and Peter Sagan having 12, 10 and 9 earlier appearances in the pocket. The most experience at Soudal - Quick Step comes from Florian Sénéchal (8 entries) and Yves Lampaert (7 entries). Their combined total of 31 appearances at the startline in Compiègne is as much as Jumbo-Visma's total. Now, looking at the UCI One Day Races Ranking, Soudal - Quick Step's highest ranked rider on the Paris-Roubaix startlist is Tim Merlier, ranking 32nd in that ranking. In comparison: three riders of Jumbo-Visma are ranked higher than the Belgian champion, who will take part in his third Paris-Roubaix: Wout van Aert (1st), Christophe Laporte (5th) and Dylan van Baarle (25th). This may be another confirmation of Soudal - Quick Step's shift of focus to stage races.

To elaborate on that, where Soudal - Quick Step would have had its strongest line up in the biggest spring classics close to home in the past, this year and with its current roster composition, the Belgian top team only has 51% of strongest line up present at Paris-Roubaix. In comparison: Alpecin-Deceuninck and TotalEnergies will have 92% of their strongest possible team at Paris-Roubaix. That may be a sign that those teams are focussing more on these type of races, also with their transfer policy.

The results list of Soudal - Quick Step in all monumental classics show what we already presumed: the team's results in the cobbled monuments are on a low for the last two years in comparison with the team's average since 2009. At the same time the team is performing better in the monumental classics with more climbing to overcome.

Where the riders of Soudal - Quick Step accumulated the most PCS-points in Paris-Roubaix by far since 2000 (they accumulated more than double the points of number two Jumbo-Visma), the team ranks only seventh over the past two editions.