The French AG2R La Mondiale team, who recently delivered a very strong performance in the Tour de France, will be driving the Vuelta a Espana with stage wins as a goal. This mostly has something to do with Domenico Pozzovivo’s injuries earlier in the season.

The team will still be protecting the Italian, but he isn’t the only protected rider from the AG2R team. Hubert Dupont and Maxime Bouet will be protected in order to make them stick to some good spot in the overall GC. The expectations from the team to Hubert Dupont is a placement between 10 and 20.

"We start this Vuelta with lower expectations than in the recent years with Domenico Pozzovivo. We will still have a thread for the general classification with Hubert Dupont, who will be aiming for a placement between 10 and 20, but will not replace Domenico. Maxime Bouet will also be protected in order to keep him in the overall GC. The big goal for us this year will be the hunt for stage wins. We will be aggressive. Lloyd (Mondery) and Yauheni (Hutarovich) will have their chance in the mass sprints. The rest of us will go in breakaways to get these famous stage wins”, SD Julien Jurdie said to the AG2R La Mondiale website.

All in the entire roster the French team has gone to Spain with has a stage win as objective on both the flat and mountainous stages of the race.