After a slow start to the season, Nacer Bouhanni (Cofidis) continued his recent momentum when he took a hugely dominant win in the Grand Prix de Denain. Having been given the perfect lead-out by a very strong Cofidis team, he was a class of his own in the bunch sprint and easily relegated Boris Vallee (Lotto Soudal) and Rudy Barbier (Roubaix) to the minor podium positions.

After several years with a lack of success, Cofidis signed Nacer Bouhanni to significantly increase their victory tally in 2015. In addition to the French fastman, they signed several lead-out riders in an attempt to build one of the strongest lead-out trains in the business.

However, nothing worked for the new formation in the first part of the year as Bouhanni failed in several bunch sprints during the months of January, February and March. The sprinter didn’t seem to have his usual speed and the lead-out train clearly didn’t work in the way the team had hoped for.

Hence, Bouhanni went into the month of April without any victories but now he has finally got the ball rolling. After two stage victories in the Circuit de la Sarthe, he took his third win in less than two weeks by defending his title in the Grand Prix de Denain.

“The team did a great job today and the train was absolutely perfect, I had to win…” Bouhanni said. "I was in the finale and I was really given a good lead-out. It took some time for me to win this year, but we needed to work on the automatisms and I have not always had Geoffrey Soupe with me."

Bouhanni now leads the Coupe de France season-long competition.

“The Coupe de France is not really a goal for me, it was more about winning,” he admitted. “I like racing up here, it’s always been good to me. It’s good to win, its good for morale. I’ve got a training camp coming up next and then I’ll ride the Bayern Rundfahrt in Germany.”