The first week of racing in the Tour de France ends with a team time trial, a discipline that appears rarely even in the grand tours and tends to offer a stiff challenge for even the best of teams, because it requires very careful team work and a sense of dedication from all the riders that have been selected.

Their idea is for all nine cyclists (let's assume that none has abandoned) to alternatively pull at the head of their small group in order to cover the 28-kilometer long stage as fast as possible.

The terrain includes some hills and some technical sections which means that the big engines need to be careful not to drop the weakest members of the team and that crashes cab be a problem for those who are more interested in the result than in safety.

In Pro Cycling Manager 2015, as in real life, team time trials tend to be hard to effectively control and win because they are rare and require some very specialized tactics.

I have Cancellara ready to pull my team most of the time, but I also need to make sure that Mollema and Arredondo do not suffocate along the way.

Prediction: BMC will take the team time trial in the real world and in the video game because here stats matter a lot.

Yesterday Vuillermoz managed to get a big win for his team and for France and one which surprised all observers.
It's hard getting a team to work together

Cycling is a team sport in which the individual has a great impact, with superstars deciding the results but doing so with a lot of support, plenty of it unseen, from teammates.

In the team time trial, all the nine riders engaged in the Le Tour need to work together smoothly, and the gamer has to find the best rhythm for each of them.

The stage was won by BMC, which probably pulled to try and get Gilbert at least a day in the Maillot Jaune), but I managed to keep my number one position, even if my riders lost some seconds.

Very careful management of all riders should allow me to win the TTT but there are a limited number of occasions to practice the system along the season and the same riders are not part of the line-up to get consistent results.