Chris Sutton has known for a while that Team Sky weren’t going to offer him a new deal to stay at the team where he won their first official race. The Australian isn’t stressing about finding a new team for 2016 wither, letting his manager deal with things as he enjoys the offseason.

“I’m still looking for a team and nothing is concrete yet,” he told CyclingTips. “My manager [Andrew McQuaid] has been looking around and I’ve been asking a few teams as well because I think it’s good for a rider to have contact with the team and show interest in joining.”

“I’ve been a pro for 10 years, which is, for me, a big achievement and I’ve got a lot of great memories at Sky. My manager is on the case and, yeah, if I can’t find a team I can’t find a team. I’d still like to be a professional bike rider, and be part of the WorldTour, at least next year, but in a sense that’s kind of out of my hands.”

After suffering with salmonella and some injuries this year, he says he did the best he could with 2016 and thanked Sky for being patient with him and helping him back to fitness.

“I was down and out for a quite a long time,” Sutton said. “I started to get going and was I was ready to hit the last part of the season good but ended up getting another injury. It wasn’t the best way to finish off the year but the team [Sky] has been great; they’ve really helped me out a lot getting it sorted so I’m on top if it and keen to start riding again.”

Sutton knows that with the UCI potentially introducing new rules that downsize teams for 2016, things are conspiring against him getting a contract. But he still says he thinks he has good enough results to merit a deal of some sort.

“I’ve had a couple of podiums this year and it’s like, what do you have to do these days to actually merit another contract, pretty much, in a team? I’m pretty lucky, some people go through 10-15 year careers and never win a race,” he said.