Despite having one of the biggest names in the sport in Fabian Cancellara, Trek Factory Racing are not one of the bigger budgets in the WorldTour peloton. The team has endured some hard years recently outside of Cancellara’s stunning Cobbled wins, but with the arrival of Bauke Mollema, that may all change as he leads a new GC orientated team.

“We are a team founded last year on the classics group. This year, we’ve added Mollema to add some stability to the GC target,” Trek general manager Luca Guercilena told VeloNews. “We want to continue to grow the team. We have built a solid base. Now we are ready for the next step.”

“I consider this the second year of the team. We have many of the same staff, but many of the key people are new to the team last year, so this should be considered a completely new team,” Guercilena continued. “We are a team founded last year on the classics group. This year, we’ve added Mollema to add some stability to the GC targets. The team has bigger ambitions.”

The team are going to have to step up too, after Cancellara was ruled out of the Classics yesterday after a crash in E3 Harelbeke. Many people see the problem with Trek as they are filled with many older riders who are past their prime and many young riders who cant be expected to win race just now as they need to develop. But with Cancellara gone, pressure will be put on Mollema, lightweight superclimber Julian Arredondo and Luxembourg TT man Bob Jungels.

In order to prevent this sort of pressure being put on riders who aren’t ready to take it, Guercilena knows he has to secure a bigger budget for his team so they can sign a few more riders like Mollema.

“We want to improve, but this is also dependent on the budget. There are teams that almost have double the budget that we do,” Guercilena continued. “It is important that we can find a co-sponsor or backer that can help us evolve. Trek has helped us start with the team and build a very solid base, but it’s evident that for this project to grow, we need more sponsors.”

“For us, to arrive at a level of Sky or Etixx-Quick-Step, we need to build up something with new sponsors,” he continued. “The base we have built up with Trek is very important, and especially when you look at the image and results, but we are ready to make a big step.”

Another reason to increase the budget is to keep the talented youngsters like Jungels, Danny van Poppel and Jasper Stuyven all at the team for the foreseeable future.

“The budgets are always increasing, you need more and more money,” he said. “We have started to build them up last year, and the intention is to support them as long as possible. These guys are our future.”