Weekly Transfer Analysis: Explaining How & Why Tom Pidcock is Going to Q36.5

Plus, examining what his exit means for Ineos' prospects in 2025 & beyond

Instead of posting the second part of my 2025 Rider Tiers project, I wanted to jump into our Weekly Transfer Analysis by exploring today’s big news, which is why and how Tom Pidcock decided to leave the WorldTour team Ineos for the struggling second-division Q36.5 ProTeam, and how this departure negatively impacts Pidcock’s former team in the short term while potentially opening up a path toward reinvention in the coming seasons (top 20 Monument contenders broken down into five tiers coming early next week).

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What Happened

After months of publicly trading barbs, Ineos and Tom Pidcock officially parted ways earlier this week before Pidcock announced he had signed for the previously unassuming Q36.5 team, who finished in the 2024 season ranked 25th in the UCI Points Rankings and 7th amongst second-division teams.

• Even after it had become clear that the relationship between Pidcock and Ineos was irreparable after months of Pidcock criticizing team management and higher-ups at the organization pulling Pidcock out of October’s Il Lombardia by pulling him off the team bus hours before the start of the race, it was still surprising to see one of the sport’s most talented young riders leaving an extremely well-funded (former) superteam to join a second-division team that is struggling to make an impact on the road as well as carve out any sort of identity off it.

Why It Is Happening

Pidcock, a high-profile rider used to the independence of Cyclocross and Mountain Bike racing, never meshed particularly well with Ineos’ great team structure, which requires even the most talented riders to either be in the mix to win Grand Tours or line up to work for their teammates who are in contention.

• Add in the fact that his sizable salary, which, if the rumors of nearly £5/€6/$6.5 million per season are true, would make him one of the highest-paid riders in the sport and not far from Tadej Pogačar’s recent record-setting deal, which pays him £6.9/€8.3/$8.8 million for the next six years for exponentially more production, has acted as a massive burden for the organization and kept them from pursuing a rider with a realistic chance of winning a Grand Tour in the coming seasons.

• Taking all of this into account, Ineos management decided that they would be better off unloading Pidcock’s contract onto another team, even if they still have to pay a portion of it to subsidize his wages at his new team (which is common when a team is eager to get a rider at least partially off their books and/or not have to deal with the drama associated with them), to free up salary to pursue true Grand Tour contenders and allow the team to move forward with an increased focused on the road, instead of managing the never-ending drama that has surrounded Pidcock.

  • With Pidcock sharing the view that he would be better off on a team that would give him the freedom to chase his off-road pursuits and pick and choose his ideal road schedule, it was only a matter of finding a team willing to take on the largest possible portion of the £15/€18/$19 million left on the remaining three years of his deal.

    • It stands to reason that Q36.5, owned and backed by billionaire Ivan Glasenberg and desperately needing a star acquisition to boost its on-road performance and off-road profile, put forth an offer that allowed Ineos to contribute an amount of money (or possibly no money at all) for the remaining three years that they thought still gave them room to chase the next major star that comes on the market.

      • Amount Ineos Owed Pidcock Through 2025-2026: £10 million

      • Amount Ineos Could Now Owe Pidcock Through 2025-2026 (assuming a partial subsidy of his new deal): £4 million

      • Potential Budget Freed Up Over Next Two Seasons: £6 million

        • For example, if Pidcock was going to cost Ineos £10 million in the 2025 and 2026 seasons, even if they have to pay 40% of his salary while he races at Q36.5 (£4 million over the next two years), they would still have freed up £3 million in salary in 2025, and would be saving an additional £6 million through 2027, which means they could offer Remco Evenepoel an annual raise to come over to the team after his contract with Soudal-QuickStep expires after the 2026 season and still come out ahead.

          • And, if Ineos drove a hard enough bargain that Q36.5 took on the entirety of Pidcock’s contract, Ineos’ savings over the next three years, £15 million, would give them a massive amount of budget flexibility to chase a top-tier Grand Tour contender.

Why This Actually Makes Sense for Pidcock

While Pidcock’s move to Q36.5 has turned heads and raised plenty of well-earned questions, if we look closely at the facts, his decision to leave one of the most decorated teams in professional cycling for a second-division team in its second year (racing under the purchased license of the defunct-Qhubeka NextHash team) whose biggest win to date was at the 2023 CRO race actually makes sense.

• Equipment: With the Q36.5 team currently riding Scott Bikes, Pidcock will have access to a top-notch road and, most importantly, mountain bikes in 2025.

  • And, with Q36.5’s owner also owning the Pinarello bike brand, there is the possibility he will be back on the brand that he rode to two consecutive Olympic MTB titles when their Scott deal expires (and Ineos’ deal with Pinarello ends).

• Access to Major Races: The biggest potential obstacle to Pidcock’s unusual transfer is access to the biggest road races, specifically, the sport’s three Grand Tours, which are only able to take four second-division teams, the top two in the UCI Points rankings from the year prior, along with two discretionary picks (which usually go to teams from the host country).

  • With Q36.5 well out of the top two ProTeam spots, facing stiff competition from other well-funded second-division teams, and not having a home country to lean on when it comes to Grand Tours, it will be extremely difficult for them to get an invitation to a Grand Tour in 2025, or even be in consideration for the Tour de France during the remainder of Pidcock’s three-year contract.

    • However, with Pidcock recently saying he wanted to focus on the Classics and other major one-day races, not the Grand Tours, he appears willing to forgo Grand Tours to focus on one-day racing and dedicate more time to his mountain bike career.

    • And, when it comes to one-day days, race organizers have far more leeway regarding wildcard invitations, meaning they can choose a total of four discretionary second-division teams (behind the top three in the Points Rankings, which receive automatic invitations).

      • Considering that Q36.5 was invited to nearly every major WorldTour race in 2024 without having the heft of rider with the star power of Pidcock, it is safe to assume that they will make it to any one-day race Pidcock wants to race in 2025 (Q36.5’s 2024 WorldTour race schedule plus Milano-Sanremo, Liège-Bastogne-Liège and Il Lombardia)

        • Team Q36.5 2024 WorldTour Race Schedule Without Pidcock
          Omloop Het Nieuwsblad
          Strade Bianche
          Tirreno-Adriatico
          Brugge de Panne
          E3 Saxo Classic
          Gent-Wevelgem
          Dwars door Vlaanderen
          Tour of Flanders
          Itzulia Basque Country
          Paris-Roubaix
          Amstel Gold
          Fleche Wallonne
          Tour of Romandie
          Eschborn-Frankfurt
          Critérium du Dauphiné
          Tour de Suisse
          Tour de Pologne
          Bemer Cyclassics

• Team Support: While there are question marks around the level of support he will receive from his team, which didn’t have a single rider finish inside the Top 100 of the UCI Points Rankings in 2024 and had their top-ranked rider, Fabio Christen, come in at 191st, at major Classics, and the level of support he will receive from the team staff, the fact that Q36.5 has a fairly small roster, currently only 24 riders, and no stars to speak of, mean that Pidcock, and his now-infamous support staff, will have plenty of freedom to operate and that Pidcock will have the freedom to create his own race schedule and add any preferred domestiques.

Weekly Transfer Analysis Part 1

Ineos-Grenadiers

• Notable new signings: Axel Laurance (Alpecin-Deceuninck), Samuel Watson (Groupama-FDJ), Bob Jungels (Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe)

• Notable departing riders: Tom Pidcock (Q36.5), Jhonatan Narváez (UAE), Ethan Hayter (Soudal-QuickStep)

• Notable unsigned riders:

• 2025 Roster Spots Remaining: 1

• Pro Cycling Stats Points In/Out: -1,223

After their worst-ever season, both in terms of races won and the greater narrative around the team, the British team has, at least so far, suffered a disaster of an off-season after losing their biggest young star and second-highest points-producing rider in Tom Pidcock, while failing to either sign a commensurate star or pick up a rider with a legitimate chance of winning a Grand Tour in 2025 and seeing a large portion of their management team leave, either through resignations or firings.

• Even if Pidcock was greatly underperforming, he was still the only rider to win a WorldTour-level one-day race for the team in 2024, and his loss leaves a massive hole in the team’s Classic prospects.

  • In theory, acquiring talented young riders, 23-year-old Brit Sam Watson and 23-year-old Frenchman Axel Laurance, provides a potential solution to replacing Pidcock.

    • However, neither has scored notable results in one-day WorldTour races and, at least so far, has relied on stage-hunting at one-week races, which is one of the places where the Ineos roster has decent depth.

• They may have hemorrhaged UCI points, parted ways with a young rider they worked extremely hard to sign in a messy, public way, and failed to sign a marquee star to solve their lack of recent Grand Tour overall wins, but the fact that they have finally moved past the Pidcock-saga, which occupied team resources and inhibited their ability to focus on the task at hand, means they can start moving forward toward their next chapter.

  • With significant salary and leadership resources freed up, Ineos can now allow their other young talents to take the lead in 2025 before attempting to use their Pidcock savings to chase a major Grand Tour star in 2026 and beyond.

    • This means that even if the team may be suffering through multiple issues at the moment, getting Pidcock’s contract off their books is the first move on their path to reinvention, especially since they will have the financial heft to invest in it after the big-money deals of Geraint Thomas and Egan Bernal expire in the coming seasons.

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