Breaking Down UCI Team Rankings

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With the Tour of Guangxi finishing last week and marking the end of the 2024 WorldTour racing calendar, I’ve been reflecting on the trends we saw emerge in the past season and planning out the Beyond the Peloton (BTP) off-season content. To kick off this reflection and re-examination, I wanted to step back and take stock of how each team stacked up in terms of the UCI point rankings.

Below are the top 25 teams, 18 WT (first division) and 7 PRT (second division), in order of the UCI points they gained from their top 20 point-scoring riders throughout the 2024 season. An overly simple explanation of the rules is that the closer your team’s riders get to 1st place, and the bigger the race, the more points your team gets.

2024 UCI Points Team Rankings

1) UAE Team Emirates (WT): 37,410.6
2) Visma-Lease a Bike (WT): 20,428
3) Soudal Quick-Step (WT): 18,154
4) Lidl-Trek (WT): 17,989
5) Red Bull-BORA – hansgrohe (WT): 16,894.3
6) Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale Team (WT): 15,917
7) INEOS Grenadiers( WT): 15,548
8) Alpecin-Deceuninck (WT): 15,009
9) Lotto Dstny (PRT): 12,579.3
10) Groupama-FDJ (WT): 12,357
11) Israel-Premier Tech (PRT): 11,723.3
12) EF Education-EasyPost (WT): 11,595
13) Movistar Team (WT): 10,879
14) Team Jayco AlUla (WT): 10,625.3
15) Intermarché-Wanty (WT): 9,915
16) Team dsm-firmenich PostNL (WT): 9,646.6
17) Bahrain-Victorious (WT): 9,547.2
18) Uno-X Mobility (PRT): 8,938.7
19) Arkéa-B&B Hotels (WT): 8,735
20) Cofidis (WT): 7,889.8
21) Astana Qazaqstan (WT): 6,563.2
22) Tudor Pro Cycling (PRT): 5,753.3
23) TotalEnergies (PRT): 4,897
24) Caja Rural-Seguros RGA (PRT): 3,913
25) Q36.5 Pro Cycling (PRT): 3,603.8

*WT = WorldTour team, PRT = second division ProTeam.

Notably, UAE Team Emirates, after narrowly topping Visma-Lease a Bike in 2023 to take the top spot in the UCI rankings for the first time, put things into overdrive in 2024, blowing Visma out of the water by just under 17,000 points.

This delta between first and second is nearly the same as the entire haul of third-place Soudal-QuickStep, who impressively slotted into third despite their ever-declining performances on the cobbles.

Four Key Team Metrics From the 2024 Season

1) Total 2024 Wins, Podiums & Top Tens

First Division (UCI WorldTeams)

When we take a look at the WorldTour win standings, UAE’s status as the sport’s best team, largely thanks to Tadej Pogačar’s stunning haul of 25 individual victories, really emerges.

Meanwhile, Lidl-Trek punches above its points weight to finish a strong second over Soudal-QuickStep, which, after winning ten straight victory titles from 2012-2021, comes in third just ahead of Visma.

Visma ceded its 2023 win title after its superstars Wout van Aert and Jonas Vingegaard suffered multiple crashes and injuries, and its over-performers in previous seasons such as Sepp Kuss saw their performances revert to the mean.

In perhaps the season’s biggest over performance, Decathlon AG2r finished 5th, ahead of win-machine Alpecin-Deceuninck.

Ineos, even with its massive budget, continued its freefall from the top of the sport. It finished with 14 wins, the fewest in the team’s 14-year history.

Second Division (UCI ProTeams)

Going into the second division, we see that Israel-Premier Tech, Uno-X Mobility, and Lotto-Dstny would have all finished in the top seven of the WorldTour win rankings, which underlines just how impressive their seasons were and just how much they punched above their respective payroll weights.

2) Team Relegation Standings for the 2023-2025 Cycle

If we zoom out and look at the relegation standings, which are a simple cumulative tally of the UCI points from the 2023 and 2024 seasons, we can see that the 2025 season, which is the last of the three-year-long cycle, will likely lack any significant suspense. The top two second-division teams, Lotto-Dstny and Israel-Premier Tech, sit relatively comfortably in 9th and 14th place, respectively, and appear set to cruise to promotion at the end of the season.

Meanwhile, with two current first division teams, Arkéa-B&B Hotels and Astana, sitting nearly 3,000 and 5,000 points in arrears of the bottom two ‘safe’ teams, Cofidis and dsm-firmenich, the relegated parties feel already settled.

To highlight how difficult that is to overcome, the 3,000 points gap Uno-X, who may not even race a Grand Tour in 2024, would need to make up between themselves and Cofidis is the same as between dsm, who had a fantastic 2024 season, and Astana, who had a comically poor one outside of Mark Cavendish’s Tour de France stage win.

Illustrating how deep Astana’s hole is, they would need to outscore their rivals by over 5,000 points in 2025, which is a tall order considering they scored just over 6,500 points in 2024.

And, even if Arkéa-B&B Hotels could theoretically overcome their 3,000-point gap, the fact that they haven’t signed any major points scorer, are relying almost entirely on cheap neo-pro signings, and their main sponsors appear to be poised to walk away from the team at the end of the season, it is highly unlikely they will be able to put up a fight.

3) Rider Reliance Rating

Another interesting metric to examine is how reliant each WorldTeam was on its top-points-scoring riders in 2024 by looking at the share of points scored by each team’s top individual riders.

Interestingly, even with Pogačar’s dominance, his share of UAE’s points only topped out as the fourth-highest in the World tour. This highlights UAE’s near-absurd squad depth, while Soudal-QuickStep’s reliance on Remco Evenepoel comes into particular focus, with the Belgian’s points-share coming in first.

Another Belgian team, Alpecin-Deceuninck, had two riders, Jasper Philipsen and Mathieu van der Poel, account for nearly half of their points.

One unexpected note is that Philipsen, not Van der Poel, was the team’s top scorer. Considering Van der Poel had a near-undefeated spring campaign, this speaks to just how consistent Philipsen is in major races and just how selective Van der Poel is when it comes to his racing schedule.

4) Final UCI Points Ranking Positions Compared to 2024 Team BTP NET Projections:

Below we can see how my pre-season BTP NET projection model stacked up against the post-season UCI Team Point Rankings, and which teams over and under-performed their points-based projections.

1) UAE-Team EmiratesTeam (BTP NET: 1)
2) Visma – Lease a Bike (BTP NET: 2)
3) Soudal – Quick Step (BTP NET: 8)
4) Lidl – Trek (BTP NET: 4)
5) BORA – Hansgrohe (BTP NET: 3)
6) Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale (BTP NET: 11)
7) INEOS Grenadiers (BTP NET: 7)
8) Alpecin – Deceuninck (BTP NET: 6)
9) Lotto Dstny (BTP NET: 10)
10) Groupama – FDJ (BTP NET: 17)
11) Israel – Premier Tech (BTP NET: 15)
12) EF Education – EasyPost (BTP NET: 9)
13) Movistar Team (BTP NET: 13)
14) Team Jayco AlUla (BTP NET: 5)
15) Intermarché – Wanty (BTP NET: 22)
16) DSM-Firmenich PostNL (BTP NET: 20)
17) Bahrain – Victorious (BTP NET: 12)
18) Uno-X Mobility (BTP NET: 18)
19) Arkéa – B&B Hotels (BTP NET: 19)
20) Cofidis (BTP NET: 16)
21) Astana Qazaqstan (BTP NET: 14)
22) Tudor Pro Cycling (BTP NET: 21)
23) TotalEnergies (BTP NET: 24)
24) Caja Rural-Seguros RGA (BTP NET: Not ranked)
25) Q36.5 Pro Cycling (BTP NET: 23)

If we break down each team’s BTP NET rating relative to their actual finishing position, some interesting angles emerge.

Who Under & Over Performed Their 2024 BTP NET Rating:

Groupama – FDJ (+7)
Intermarché – Wanty (+7)
Soudal – Quick Step (+5)
Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale (+5)
Israel – Premier Tech (+4)
DSM-Firmenich PostNL (+4)
Lotto Dstny (+1)
TotalEnergies (+1)
UAE-Team EmiratesTeam (0)
INEOS Grenadiers (0)
Visma – Lease a Bike (0)
Lidl – Trek (0)
Movistar Team (0)
Uno-X Mobility (0)
Arkéa – B&B Hotels (0)
Tudor Pro Cycling (-1)
BORA – Hansgrohe (-2)
Alpecin – Deceuninck (-2)
Q36.5 Pro Cycling (-2)
EF Education – EasyPost (-3)
Cofidis (-4)
Bahrain – Victorious (-5)
Astana Qazaqstan (-7)
Team Jayco AlUla (-9)

For example, while UAE, Visma, and Lidl-Trek finished at or near the top of the points table, we can see that they simply hit par scores relative to their roster talent.

And while Ineos appeared to have a disastrous season, they actually finished exactly how the aggregate past performance of their roster had them forecasted.

Unexpectedly, the biggest overperformer was Groupama-FDJ, despite scoring just 15 victories. This was partly due to their steady diet of smaller French races, consistent performances from Stefan Küng throughout the season, and Valentin Madouas and Küng picking up nearly 1,000 UCI points between them at the Olympics road race, where they ironically weren’t racing under their Groupama trade team banner.

Meanwhile, EF Education-EasyPost, Cofidis, and Bahrain had disappointing seasons relative to their talent level, while Astana flirted with disaster, finishing seven spots below their projection.

Interestingly, Jayco-AlUla, which flew under the radar with a mid-to-low table performance but was actually the biggest underperformer of the season, finished a stunning nine places below their projection.

This is mainly due to getting almost nothing from their high-profile off-season signing, Caleb Ewan, and Simon Yates scoring 1/3rd of his 2023 points total.

Yates’ transition from a big race contender to a solid rider who would be better served riding in support of others is likely why he felt comfortable leaving Jayco for Visma this off-season.