Johan Bruyneel disappointed with Team RadioShack-Nissan performance in the first quarter of the season
Team RadioShack-Nissan was optimistic to fill its bag with some important victories in March after a disappointing start to its 2012 campaign.
The team struggled during the final races of the Spring Classics after Fabian Cancellara suffered a fracture during the Tour of Flanders.
Fabian had to miss the remaining Ardennes and the Cobbled classics and rest of the Luxembourg based squad was unable to match the likes of their Swiss cyclist.
The only victories claimed by the team came through the mighty Cancellara.
He registered the first win of his 2012 season by finishing first at the Strade Bianche 2012.
The cyclist also claimed the seventh stage of the Tirreno-Adriatico and was looking good before his fracture.
Despite being one of the most expensive teams in the 2012 season, Team RadioShack-Nissan currently holds the 8th overall spot at the UCI World Tour team’s rankings with 327 points to its credit.
Team Omega Pharma-Quick Step is leading the category with a total number of 547 points while Team Liquigas-Cannondale and Team Katusha are holding the second and the third positions respectively.
The classics season is now over and the team’s General Manager Johan Bruyneel is looking ahead at Frank Schleck to help the team with the biggest goal of its 2012 season, the Tour de France.
Bruyneel mentioned on the team’s website, “This is absolutely not the result we expected from the team”.
“If we consider that is the end of the first part of the season, here at the end of the Classics, we are far from satisfied”.
“We had a good start with Milan-San Remo, but then once Fabian was injured, we lost hope for those Classics”.
“Next we looked to the Ardennes Classics and we hoped to see improvement here”.
“But all of it was far from what we expected. [At Liege-Bastogne-Liege] we had no one in the top 20 and we can’t be happy with that”.
Andy Schleck missed the top podium finish during the Tour de France 2011 by a mere difference of 1 minute and 34 seconds on Cadel Evans.
An overall victory at the Tour de France 2012 will be enough for the Luxembourg based team to make up for the losses in the earlier part of the season.
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