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Team Bora-Hansgrohe won the Giro, Jumbo-Visma the Tour and Quickstep Alpha Vinyl the Vuelta. But what team can we pick as the best performing team in the Grand Tours this year?

One could reason that the final GC is what it's all about. Therefore the statistic of the lowest sum of best GC results would be a logic statistic to find the best grand tour team. Ineos Grenadiers comes up top with a 2nd result in the Giro, 3rd in the Tour and 7th in the Vuelta. However, Astana is ranked second without any podium and even without a stage win. So we need a different formula.

Figure 1. INEOS Grenadiers has the lowest sum of best GC results in grand tours

The PCS point scale is designed mainly for the year rankings to find out who is the best rider over a period of time. If we would use this for finding the best team in the grand tours, Jumbo Visma would top the charts with 2407 points, almost 600 points ahead of UAE Team Emirates. Only now, team Astana is ranked 17th which is too low for scoring three top-10 final results. We need to dig deeper into the numbers.

Figure 2. Total PCS points scored in grand tours by team.

Number of stage wins? Also here Jumbo Visma is leading, but before Alpecin-Deceuninck which has a 39th best GC result.

Figure 3. Most stage wins this season in grand tours by team.

Being leader in one of the classifications is more than in other races a prize in itself. Counting all leader jerseys, and, since we are finding the best team, also the team classification gives the following list where we find Trek Segafredo on third position.

Figure 4. Total number of leader jerseys in grand tours by team.

Another major part of any grand tour is who makes it into the breakaway. Having the team kit on television gives exposure to the team and yields sometimes unexpected and memorable stage wins. Summing up all the kilometres riders spent in the breakaway by team gives a clear winner this year. EF Education-EasyPost is the most fanatic team getting in the breakaway. Interestingly we find Ineos Grenadiers only back on the 21st position here, while Jumbo-Visma is in the top-4. An interesting difference in team tactics.

Figure 5. Most kilometres in the attack by team in Grand Tours.

Now all these statistics in itself don't give an answer to who is the best team. Therefore we have combined them and come up with the following point scale. For a grand tour win the team receives 100 points, 2nd place is 75, 3rd is 50 and the places 4 to 10 get each 25 points. A stage win is worth 20 points, a top-10 result is 2 points. Wearing the leader jersey is 5 points, leading any other classification is worth 3 points. Finally, for each 100 km in the attack, a team gets 1 point. Applying this scale to the results, we get the following ranking.

Figure 6. Best team in grand tours in 2022.

In conclusion we can answer our question that Jumbo-Visma is the best scoring team in the grand tours this year.