After two very disappointing years at Orica-GreenEDGE, Ivan Santaromita has spoken to Cyclingnews at the Tour of Qatar about his time at the team and his new role at SkyDive Dubai.

"Last year I only did 35 race days, and I think that’s a bit hard for a rider. I like to train and all that, but a rider needs to race. I raced very little last year, and I found myself in a situation that wasn’t easy," Santaromita told Cyclingnews at the Tour of Qatar.

The problems awith the Aussie team first began when the team won the Giro time trial in 2014. Santaromita was the national road race champion of Italy, but was not allowed to cross the line first to take the maglia rosa, a special thing for all Italians to do.

He said that he and the team were very different in the way they wanted to proceed with the future and things just didn’t work out.

"It was just different ways of thinking. Two different mentalities," he said, adding: "The longer it went on, the worse it got."

Santaromita says his new team can offer him some good races for 2016, but his main goal is to return to a higher level for 2017.

"We’ll go to Malaysia and Taiwan after this, but then we head into a European calendar, with some races in Italy like Coppi e Bartali, which I won in 2013, Trentino, and some races in Spain. I feel good here, but obviously, the WorldTour is the WorldTour, so I want to get the kind of results I need to get back to the level I was at in 2013."