‘Putain!Bruno Mallet slams the steering wheel of his blue Skoda. He wants to pass, he is in a hurry. It swerves from left to right, traveling at 70 kilometers per hour on a narrow French country road. But the group of riders he wants to overtake turns with him and so he has to brake fully.
A moment ago, Mallet stopped on a cobblestone strip between the hamlets of Émerchicourt and Monchécourt. He sees Norwegian sprinter Alexander Kristoff raising his hands. Puncture. Mechanic Anthony Poncet is ready in the back seat, mask already on. The car has not yet stopped on the verge next to the cereal plants when he has flung open the door, new front wheel in hand. Within forty seconds, Kristoff has a new wheel.
While tufts of riders race past in clouds of dust, the Norwegian whips his leg over the frame and turns on. A flight of stairs into a vacuum, his chain is off. Mallet and Poncet see it happening from a side mirror, they pull up again. “No time,” Mallet says. “He can fix this himself, we have to get back to the pack.”
Mallet and Poncet are part of Shimano’s Neutral Service Team, the roadside assistance team of the Tour de France. If a rider has broken down on the road – a flat tire, broken steering wheel or worse – and there is no team car nearby, the men in the blue cars help them on their way again. Last year Shimano took over that responsibility from Mavic, which has been providing the service since 1977.
On a day like Wednesday, their presence is indispensable. Stage five from Lille to Arenberg is a miniature Paris-Roubaix, with eleven cobblestone sections. Riders have been preparing for months for fear of falls and losing minutes of time. The last time at such a stage in the Tour, in 2014, favorite Chris Froome crashed and dismounted. Alberto Contador then lost minutes and gave up a few days later.
At Shimano, the preparations have been extensive: the normal team of three cars, a motorcycle and a van with materials, has been expanded with three extra motorcycles. Each vehicle has a driver and a mechanic; in all there are fifteen men. In this way they want to avoid a scenario like in 2016, when Chris Froome had bad luck in the twelfth stage and ran up a bit due to lack of support on Mont Ventoux.
Nervousness
The day started early for the team. Every cycling team gets on adapted bicycles to brave the northern French cobblestones, so the mechanics have been at each team bus from eight o’clock to check which parts are being ridden. Bahrain and DSM have installed cassettes with 11 instead of 12 sprockets on their rear wheels, so Shimano’s cars will last more of those wheels. Each car houses six bicycles, fifteen wheels and dozens of extra parts, gels and water bottles.
Poncet points out the different bicycles on the roof. Front left is set to Tadej Pogacar, rear right is a bike for Primoz Roglic. Front right is for yellow jersey wearer Wout van Aert, next to it is a small bicycle for a rider like Nairo Quintana. Poncet packs the car in and out every day. The fifteen wheels have to be inflated, the bicycles cleaned. Then everything goes back into the car.
The duo Mallet and Poncet will be ‘car 3’ on Wednesday, which means that they have to stay with the peloton. The other cars go after the leading group and pursuers, the engines offer their support. For car 3 it promises to be a difficult afternoon, because the roads are narrow and with all those cobbled lanes it is questionable whether there will be a peloton left.
†Bonne chance a tous”, shouts Mallet over the radio as he drives out of Lille in a parade of team leaders’ cars. Because the first cobblestone strip is only 80 kilometers away, little happens in the first two hours. Mechanic Poncet closes his eyes for a moment, and when a leading group pulls away from the peloton, Mallet instructs his colleagues when to follow them.
He did notice some nervousness in his team this morning at breakfast, Mallet says. He has been driving racing cars for 25 years and has been driving Shimano cars since 2010. This Tour he manages the team. “They certainly know what to do, but it is a special stage. That is why we communicate a little more.”
The stress is also noticeable in the row with plow cars. There is a sequence that the cars must follow, but the team leaders perform breakneck overtaking maneuvers when they want to take their place in line again after a short stop. They all want to be in the right position when the stage ignites.
After 74 kilometers of course, Mallet opens his window for a moment. He sighs, takes a deep breath. “Just one more breath of fresh air,” he grins. Then all windows close. A white, square arc looms, the shaking begins. Mallet drives at least 50 kilometers per hour on the first cobblestone strip. Nothing moves – driver and mechanic packed everything well.
It is quiet in the car. Mallet and Poncet listen carefully to messages from colleagues, which come in via their own radio channel. In addition, they keep an eye on the course radio.
As a driver, you have to stay calm and have a sense of direction, Mallet says. You should see the Neutral Service Team as a cycling team without riders, and as a driver you are the team leader. “You have to be able to anticipate what the riders are going to do. Then you can respond to that,” says Mallet. Many of his colleagues are therefore former pros, such as the Dutchman Nico Verhoeven who won a stage in the 1987 Tour.
Split-second decisions
As the cobblestones follow each other mercilessly, Mallet and his colleagues frantically try to keep their cars and motorcycles in the right places on the course. They are split-second decisions that the team has to make every time: do they stop in front of a rider, or is there a team manager’s car nearby and do they continue?
“Now everything is ours,” Mallet shouts over the radio to the Shimano engine in front of him as they ride the fourth cobblestone section of the day together. The peloton has been smashed to pieces, the team leaders cars have disappeared from sight. The bicycle wheels on the motorbike vibrate like reeds in the wind.
At speeds of up to 130 kilometers per hour, Mallet steers his car over northern French back roads. He uses the horn non-stop, racing through the bends with squeaking tires. On the cobblestone lanes, Mallet turns on the windshield wipers to see where he’s headed.
Granite clinker
With every new cobblestone strip there seems to be more audience. People shrink back into the cornfield as Mallet drives up at high speed. †Merde!”, he shouts when a spectator steps back too late, the car has to swerve and makes a huge bang on a granite clinker. “That’s impossible.”
Meanwhile, riders left behind float by like shadows in the sand fumes. Jumbo leader Roglic has fallen and grabs his knee – that is a matter for the team manager’s car. The same goes for Alexei Lutsenko, Poncet saw a car from his Bora team drive up through the rear window. A Shimano motor does stop for Mathieu van der Poel a little later, the car continues.
After a mad chase, Mallet neatly rejoins the peloton, behind the car of the race director. He wipes the sweat on his hands on his polo shirt. Poncet knocks the dust off the back seat.
When the last cobblestone strip has passed, their task seems to be done for this day. “We’re only ready at the finish,” Poncet says, but the men know that the toughest part is over. They don’t even make it to the finish line; when they enter Arenberg relaxed, they are sent to the left by the organization 150 meters from the finish. “We were there when we were needed,” Mallet says with satisfaction about the most difficult day of this Tour, and he parks the car on the sidewalk.
#Squeaky #tires #continuous #honking #road #Tours #roadside #assistance #team