New year, new team, and a new Tour de France strategy for Remco Evenepoel.
The Olympic road race and time trial champion is swapping the colours of Soudal Quick-Step for Red Bull-Bora-hansgrohe in 2026, after a seven-year spell with the team he turned pro with in 2019.
In contrast to his past two appearances at the Tour where he has been his team’s only GC leader, Evenepoel will line up at the 2026 race alongside his new Red Bull teammate Florian Lipowitz. Just this summer, Lipowitz, on debut in the Tour, finished third.
The two-pronged approach is therefore not a surprise, but it’s going to be a new way of working for Evenepoel, who for years has been used to having an entire team working solely for him.
Speaking at Red Bull’s 2026 season launch in Mallorca, the Belgian didn’t try to pretend that it won’t be easy adapting to the new situation. “It will be the first time I go to a Grand Tour with double leadership, and it’s the best way for us to do well,” he said.
“I only knew yesterday that I was going to be riding the Tour, so it’s still early to speak about racing it together as there’s a lot of time to go. We will do some races together and training camps because it’s pretty new and we will learn about each other more and more, and learn how to race together.
“We are both different types of riders in terms of tactics and decisions in the race, and we can only try and go for it and see how it goes.
“It’s a bit early to make a final decision or comment about going together. But in many Grand Tours it’s always better to go there with a few leaders. The team decides who goes to the Tour and we adapt to each other and the tactics. It’s not the end of the world to go together.
“Hopefully we can both end up together as high as possible. Whether it’s myself or Florian, we want to be on the first step, but it’s a very difficult one to do.”
Evenepoel and Lipowitz will first race together at March’s Volta a Catalunya, and they are already promising to entertain. “There are multiple tactics that we can use… and I think two completely different styles when they come together can be a very good combination. We will also try it in other races,” Evenepoel said.
(Image credit: Red Bull-Bora-hansgrohe/Maximilian Fries)
The overwhelming favourite for the 2026 Tour will be Tadej Pogačar once again, and neither Evenepoel nor Lipowitz made any grand statements about being confident of bettering the Slovenian. But, Evenepoel insisted, an impressive performance next July could lay the foundations for an eventual successful tilt at claiming the yellow jersey.
“Everybody knows that Tadej has been really outstanding the last few years, so for us it’s a goal as a team and individually as well to come as close as possible and to hopefully one day win it,” he said.
“For us it’s really important to go to the Tour this year with a really strong team, to prove to ourselves that we have a big future for this race, and that we can win it with the team at some point.
“For myself I will just try to improve myself as much as possible. There are a lot of new things that I have learned in this team that I am now doing and I think all of these things will help me to become a better rider, and I hope it’s going to be enough.”
A 19.7km team time trial [TTT] in the centre of Barcelona will get the 2026 Tour underway, with the Spanish city hosting the Grand Départ. In a change to tradition, instead of each rider receiving the same time as the rest of his teammates, riders will be able to split off from their team in the closing kilometre and sprint to the line quicker. It is likely that Evenepoel will gain a few seconds immediately on Lipowitz.
“The first three to four days are really good for us to try to grab a stage win and of course we are aiming to take yellow on day one,” Evenepoel said.
To help in his and his team’s quest to gain an early upper hand in the race for the maillot jaune, Evenepoel will open his season in late January with a 26km team time trial as part of the annual Challenge Mallorca races.
“It’s a good opportunity to test all of the stuff, to test line-ups, and just to get used to racing in a TTT because it’s something very specific, and of course for us it’s going to be a very big day, the first one of the Tour. We’re going to race the Mallorca TTT like it’s the first stage of the Tour.”
As for the rest of the Tour, world time trial champion Evenepoel bemoaned the lack of time trialling kilometres; stage 16’s 26km ITT is the race’s sole test against the clock, and it packs in several hundreds of metres of climbing.
“Personally I’m a bit disappointed with the TT we get, because we have so many metres of climbing in the last week and we don’t have a real TT,” he said. “That’s the only negative point.”
There had been some discussion that Evenepoel would ride the Giro d’Italia before the Tour, as well as making his debut at the Tour of Flanders. But the two-time Liège-Bastogne-Liège winner confirmed that his racing schedule would be “normal”, with the Tour and the World Championships the main focus.
“I had a very difficult season last year and so we want a good season, an easy-going one, not so many crazy things,” he said.
As for the Worlds in Montreal, he commented: “For sure in the TT I will always be there, and the road race it’s a very nice opportunity. It’s another big goal for me and I will try to be there at more than 100% to try and go for a double. That would be very nice for myself and also for my team.”
