Evenepoel was beaten by Isaac Del Toro in the sprint for third place and was too angry to comment straight after the finish of the stage, where Tadej Pogacar showed that he is in a class of his own in this year's Tour de France.
When he regained his composure, he spoke to Beligan media outlet Sporza and said. “I had asked for a lead-out, and I didn’t get one,” he said in reference to the lack of cooperation from German Lipowitz.
“Yes, I was angry, and rightly so. In the Tour of Catalonia, I rode on the front for him for 30 kilometers. I asked him to ride on the front for one kilometer, and that wasn’t possible. That made me angry, and it will have to be properly discussed tonight,” Evenepoel said.
On the climbs, the Belgian rider was able to establish a fairly good rhythm. “It was pretty OK. I did what I could do. In any case, I wasn’t planning to go completely into the red at the end of the Tourmalet, because there was still a long descent to come. The UAE went extremely hard. We were already riding pretty fast ourselves, but they went extremely fast.”
“I knew that with my descending skills, I would still be able to get back to the group ahead of me,” Evenepoel said, in reference to Del Toro, Seixas, and Lipowitz, who were ahead of him at that point of the race. “I was 15 to 20 seconds behind. So I had to do it, but I know that climb and that descent pretty well. And I know I can descend well.”
“The plan was to go à bloc with calculated risks. But in the end, my tactic was not to go completely over the limit uphill and then go down fast,” Evenepoel explained. He wasn't able to make the most of that approach because of the lack of cooperation between the two teammates.
“I understand that Del Toro and Sepp Kuss don’t ride, but Lidl-Trek were there with two riders and they didn’t want to ride straight away. I thought: what do you have to lose? If we work together, maybe we can still get to Jonas,” he said, referring to Mattias Skjelmose and Juan Ayuso.