The peloton will be in Tuscany for the tenth edition of the Strade Bianche on Saturday 5 March 2016. This Italian classic, which has become more popular during the past few years, is part of the Europe Tour.

Lotto Soudal heads to Italy with different types of riders. Tiesj Benoot, Jürgen Roelandts, Maxime Monfort and Rafael Valls are the main names. It’s been five years since the Lotto team last went to Strade Bianche; Philippe Gilbert won in 2011.

Sports director Bart Leysen gives a preview.

“There are a few tough and tricky sections on the course. Some parts are tougher compared to the hills at the Ronde Van Vlaanderen or Brabantse Pijl. If it rains, the chance of punctures and chain problems will increase. It’s possible that we’ll have a Paris-Roubaix scenario. Although these gravelled sections are different in comparison to the hills of the spring classics. These sections are much longer and sometimes steeper.

"This is just a very nice race, the first selection will already occur in the first half of the race. The sections at about sixty kilometres of the finish will be very important, especially the ones of nine and eleven kilometres. There’s also a tough climb at the end. It will be a hard race, that’s for sure.

“We have a very motivated Tiesj Benoot in our team and he’s in a very good shape as well. He’s a rider that can perform several consecutive accelerations and we need someone like him in such races. Also Jürgen Roelandts and Jens Debusschere can handle such courses. But Tiesj will be our leader and will be protected. We hope to obtain a nice result of course, everyone is in good shape so I think we can influence the race. Maybe one of our riders can be part of the early break so that other teams need to ride at the front of the peloton. The competition will be hard though, riders such as Valverde and Cancellara are always good.

“We will already leave for Tuscany on Thursday. Only Jens will arrive later, he replaces Stig Broeckx. We want to do a recon of the final sixty kilometres with the seven other riders on Friday. Just to let the riders feel how tough these gravelled sections are. During that recon, we’ll also test the tyre pressure for instance. This training will be useful because a great amount of our line-up isn’t familiar with this race.”

Line-up Lotto Soudal:

Tiesj Benoot, Jens Debusschere, Bart De Clercq, Pim Ligthart, Tomasz Marczynski, Maxime Monfort, Jürgen Roelandts and Rafael Valls.