After an impressive showing at the end of 2012, Tim Wellens got his first full year of WorldTour racing under his belt in 2013. Hoping to develop into a GC rider, the talented Belgian will test himself in the Giro in the coming season.

With several good performances in hilly stage races as U23 riders, Tim Wellens was already regarded as a big talent when Lotto Belisol gave him the chance to ride for the team from July 2012. However, it still came as a surprise to many when the young Belgian finished 10th overall in his first WorldTour stage race at the Tour of Beijing later at the end of that year.

2013 was expected to be a year of confirmation for the young Belgian. While he never reached the same heights in the overall standings of the biggest stage races, his aggressive riding in the Canadian WorldTour races and the Criterium du Dauphiné underlined his potential.

Those performances were enough for Wellens to give a positive overall assessment of his first full season as a professional.

" I’m very happy with my season," he told Cyclingmole. "It was better than expected."

Wellens best results came at the Tour de Wallonie where he finished 8th overall and was 2nd in both the youth and mountains competitions. However, he regards his strong rides on the WorldTour scenes as his best performances.

As a result this was the best but as a performance the Dauphine and the GP Montréal were much better," he said. In the French stage race he came close to a stage win on the final stage but his breakaway companion Alessandro De Marchi took the spoils while the young Belgian was reeled in by the main favourites.

Wellens doesn't hide his future ambitions, stating that "I would like to become a rider for the GC." To get there, he will take aim at races like the Wallonian tour.

"It’s in these kind of smaller races where I have to make some good results," he said.

While he will try to perform well in shorter stage races, he will also get his first taste of grand tour racing in 2014.

"I’m going to ride the Giro this year," he said. "The main objective it to do better than last year. I look very forward to riding my first grand tour but I have no special ambitions for this."

In 2013 Wellens opened his season at the Tour Down Under but he is unlikely to do so in 2014.

"I would love to go to Australia again," he said. "It’s a very beautiful race. But due to a small surgery with a couple of complications I started training very late this season. I am unsure if I will participate."

Wellens ended his season at the GP Montreal on September 15.