Team Giant-Alpecin is back in WorldTour stage race action next week at the six-day Vuelta Ciclista al Pais Vasco. Tom Dumoulin returns to racing here after two weeks of training and preparation, building for his season's objectives and the Dutch time trial champion will have an eye on the final day's individual time trial.

Dumoulin is joined by Lawson Craddock who made a return to racing at last week's Volta Catalunya, as well as road captain Johannes Fröhlinger, Carter Jones and Daan Olivier who were also racing in Catalunya. The team is then completed by Caleb Fairly and Cheng Ji who recently raced at the Criterium International, as well as Fredrik Ludvigsson who will line-up for the first WorldTour race of his young career.

Team coach Christian Guiberteau said ahead of the race: "Pais Vasco is one of the hardest one-week races on the calendar so you have to be quite open minded coming into it. We come here with Tom as a leader as he prepares for the Ardennes Classics, and this race was selected as one of the best for this.

"The goal for the team as a whole is to go for stage opportunities where we can and also for Tom to test himself in the time trial. Hopefully we can have a good race and come out of it having shown ourselves and worked on our processes as a team."

The six-stage race features three tough rolling stages before two mountain-top finishes and then a final 18.3km individual time trial. It's a race that often attracts some of the world's best climbers but the different stages will present various opportunities for the strengths of Team Giant-Alpecin.