'I think what we did today was close to perfection' – Remco Evenepoel wins team time trial on Red Bull-Bora-hansgrohe debut

Remco Evenepoel won on his Red Bull-Bora-hansgrohe debut on Thursday, as the team were victorious in the team time trial at the Trofeo Ses Salines.

The seven-man squad, which included Florian Lipowitz as well, were the penultimate team off, and despite being behind Jayco AlUla and Movistar at the intermediate checkpoint, beat both at the finish. Movistar were second, 3.7 seconds behind, with Jayco a further 13 seconds back.

Red Bull completed the 23.8km at an average speed of 59.7km/h. The one-day race, part of the Challenge Mallorca, was made a TTT in preparation for stage one of this year's Tour de France in Barcelona, which will also be a TTT. Alongside Evenepoel and Lipowitz, the team was made up of Nico Denz, Maxim Van Gils, Gianni Moscon, Lorenzo Finn and Mattia Cattaneo.

The result was a good sign for that first opportunity for the yellow jersey at the Tour. One of the other big contenders for that opening day TTT, UAE Team Emirates-XRG, finished fourth, 19 seconds behind Red Bull.

"It was pretty good," Evenepoel, who joined Red Bull from Soudal Quick-Step over the winter, said. "It was not a hard course in terms of elevation, but a TTT is always pretty tough, pretty hard. We had a pretty structured plan and it turned out well, so I think we have to be happy. We knew the way back was going to be most important with the headwind and the small kicker, at 3km to go, so we knew we wanted to make a big difference there, and I think we did. We're very happy with it, and it's nice to start the new season with a win, and also with a new team, it's good for morale.

"Everybody knew that we were going to go really paced until that u-turn, and then we had about 13km to go so we knew we had to go flat out until the climb and then on the climb. Well, false flat. We just went as fast as possible and winning is winning. It was a really fast TTT and I think we did it perfect.

"Every parcours is different so it's always difficult to say what we could improve on. I think what we did today was close to perfection for this TTT, I think we handled the critical situation well. Nico Denz was on a strong day, he did some strong pulls, and I think everyone did what they did. For today it was close to perfect."

Last year, Red Bull's head of engineering, Dan Bigham, told CW: "We haven’t mastered it yet, but there’s plenty of work to be done, and I think we will improve him. I hope we’ll improve him."