Ian Stannard of Team Sky proved to be incredibly strong once again, when he managed to maintain the furious pace dictated by Omega Pharma-Quick Step, as the Belgian squad mercilessly shattered the peloton into pieces in the relentless winds blowing on Qatari desert.

This should be considered a good prognosis for the powerful Briton, as he would certainly aim to keep up with the Omega Pharma-Quick Step riders when they hit the cobbled roads of the northern Europe in March.

It never was a big secret that not everything fell into the right places for Team Sky classics specialists during their 2013 spring campaign, and Stannard took his time on several occasions over the past few months to point out all the factors responsible for their failure.

Apart from such a random factor as luck, never without a certain meaning when it comes to the crash-marred cobbled races, the big Briton partially blamed a very unusual preparation period that Team Sky classic unit underwent in the previous season, which didn’t bring expected results.

This year Stannard was pleased to return to the more familiar approach, with more racing days in legs before hitting the cobbled roads of the northern Europe instead of having a prolonged training camp, as they did in 2013. Thus, together with his team-mates he is expected to ride Paris-Nice or Tirreno-Adriatico, races they were forced to skip last year.

"I think the best way to race well is to go to races," Stannard said

The 26-year old Briton pointed out to another very important factor, as he believes that lacking the leader of the stature of Boonen or Fabian Cancellara, Team Sky would still be able to make some good amends of their strength in numbers, should some more studied tactical approach to those races be implied.

Stannard believes, that having numerous equally strong cyclists on board, the only way to compete with the likes of Boonen or Cancellara strongly supported by whole their teams is following the similar approach. In order to do so, an established hierarchy for every single race is required, so they can use their accumulated power to back the appointed leader instead of rather pointlessly trying to proceed with their own affairs.

"We’ve got a lot of good riders but no-one on their level I guess either, so it’s about using that to the right advantage," Stannard told Cyclingnews.

"We go into those races with a lot of leaders, if you like, but without one designated guy and that’s our downfall a bit sometimes as well."

"You look at QuickStep and Trek, they’ve got one leader and everybody rides for him. That’s the way it is, and I think we should follow a similar pattern."

Luck at the Classics being what it is – after all, Cancellara and Boonen crashed out of the Tour of Flanders in 2012 and 2013, respectively – Stannard sees the need for a back-up option, but maintains that approaching each Classic with a defined game plan is essential.

"You’ve got one leader and one back-up plan maybe. But you’ve got to go there with one guy and really focus on the best way to get the result out of him. You can’t go there with three or four guys, [and say] ‘You’ve all got a chance, you’ve got to play it right,’ because it doesn’t work, does it?"