"Was Remco Evenepoel the other big winner of stage 4 of Paris-Nice?" Belgian newspaper Dernière Heure speculated in its race analysis of Wednesday's dramatic events in the Course au Soleil. After the way Evenepoel's team handled the terrible race conditions on Wednesday, claiming three of the four top spots on the stage, it would be hard to disagree.
Whilst Evenepoel continues his altitude training camp in the Canaries, 2,000 kilometres further north, Red Bull started off their day in Paris-Nice as the best-represented squad in the 40-strong echelon that formed in the opening kilometres of the mountainous stage.
Six of their seven riders were present in the stage-defining opening move – only former Paris-Nice podium finisher Aleksandr Vlasov failed to make the cut. Then even more importantly for the final result, a hefty majority – Nico Denz, Dani Martínez, the Van Dijke twins, Mick and Tim, and 22-year-old Briton Calum Thornley – were all on the right side of the big crash, which saw race leader Juan Ayuso (Lidl-Trek), amongst others, forced to quit.
On a memorably appalling day of multiple crashes, mass abandons – the Paris-Nice peloton lost 15 riders in total on stage 4 – and weather so atrocious just finishing the stage was an achievement in itself, Vingegaard finally took the win.
But the three equally bedraggled figures that crossed the rain-soaked finish line after him were all Red Bull racers, starting with team co-leader Dani Martínez, 41 seconds down, and then followed by Tim and Mick van Dijke in third and fourth.
As Dernière Heure noted, that exceptionally strong all-round performance, represents excellent news for Evenepoel in the mid-to-long term, given both the impressive show of collective strength and cohesion and that two of the three riders – Martínez and Tim van Dijke – are currently on the long list for Red Bull in the Tour de France.
"We were at the front of the group all day and were in control;" Tim van Dijk, already second in Omloop Het Nieuwsblad this spring, pointed out on the team's website.
"And then we pushed as hard as we could to maximise the gap for the overall standings. That was super painful, but really important. I think that was perfect teamwork."
"We expected a war today and yeah, we made one," added sports director Sven Vanthourenhout in the same report.
"This was also what we asked this morning in the team bus: Don't hesitate. Take it on from kilometre zero.'
"We knew it was a hard day. It was cold and rainy. We didn't win, but we're happy with the result, just like with the overall standings. So we can look back on a really, really good day."
"Six of our seven guys were in the first echelon," Vanthourenhout noted to Sporza "Only Vlasov was missing. So I'm very proud.
"These are days where you make a plan, but it doesn't always work out. Today everything went our way, and even after that first echelon, we didn't let anything slip."
Five riders remained in the front group afterwards, and as Vanthourenhout put it, "I wanted to make the most of the fact that we were down to that.
"We had to try and survive those first two climbs" – of the three in the finale – "with as many riders as possible.
"I drove them crazy from the team car so I could be sure they would be able to tackle that final climb together."
The only part of the jigsaw that was missing from a perfect day for Red Bull was that Martínez. The Colombian climber, frozen by the cold and rain like so many riders, was unable to even try to react when Vingegaard attacked.
That said, after Martínez said as early as the Volta ao Algarve that he had plenty of unfinished business following his disastrous 2025 , the Colombian, second overall behind Vingegaard, is now very well placed for what would be his biggest result since his runner-up spot in the 2024 Giro d'Italia.
"He was quite numbed from the cold," Vanthourenhout admitted to Sporza, before emphasising how the team's excellent backing all the way to a kilometre before the finish had worked in the Colombian climber's favour.
"If the Van Dijkes hadn't been there, he probably would have been dropped much earlier. But now he might not have 'dared' [to be dropped] because the boys had supported him so much."
The massive presence of Red Bull in the front group and their fine final result can be partly put down to good judgement, too as well as raw physical power. If Ayuso's crash had involved a different rider in a different place in the pack, then the lead group might have been bigger or had a different combination of riders.
But being on the front at the right time helped them avoid that scenario, and the fact remains that even before the pile-up had happened, Red Bull were present in significant numbers on a very difficult day. Afterwards, as other teams were unable or too unlucky beforehand to be able to react, they had the strength and cohesion to continue.
Evenepoel wasn't the only top name who was likely impressed by Red Bull's performance: the actual winner, Jonas Vingegaard also paid tribute to how the rival squad's group effort had worked in his favour, too. As he jokingly put it to TV2, "I probably owe them a bottle of wine or a beer or something, " before adding more seriously, "They were extremely strong today, and they rode extremely well.”
