Home crowd favourites Euskaltel-Euskadi enter Vuelta al País Vasco on a frantic quest for a victory.

So far, the Basque team is the only UCI ProTeam without a win in the opening phase of the 2013 season.

As a consequence, the orange clad team will be under tremendous pressure to deliver when racing on home soil next week when defending the title won last year by Samuel Sánchez.

The team’s winless drought comes just as it discarded its long-term policy of hiring only Basque regional riders and opened its team to foreign riders.

Popular Basque riders such as Amets Txurruka and Ivan Velasco were dropped for 2013, while the team signed seven non-Basque riders, including Moroccan Tarif Chaoufi and Slovenian sprinter Jure Kocjan, mainly (or only) because they brought valued UCI points that helped secure a spot in the UCI WorldTour.

Since then, however, Euskaltel-Euskadi has not made much of an impression, with only two third places all season. The first was stage 5 at the Tour Mediterranean with Mikel Nieve, and another in stage 3 at Paris-Nice with Gorka Izaguirre.

The team fell horribly short at early-season stage races, with Jon Izaguirre finishing 10th at Paris-Nice and Nieve coming 13th at the Volta a Catalunya. Hardly enough to satisfy neither team ambitions nor fans’ expectations.

That’s not exactly the stuff legends are made of and the volatile Basque press is starting to take notice.

With the pressure on, we should anticipate to witness the well known orange Euskaltel-Euskadi jersey on the offensive throughout the week.