While the Tour of Qatar may not have been particularly successful for Bradley Wiggins, he walked away with a podium in the TT and got in his first race days of his final half-season at Team Sky. He also learned more about who will be at his side in the Classics, and in particular, his final race at Paris-Roubaix.

“The group’s important and it takes time to form,” Team Sky‘s sports director, Servais Knaven told Cycling Weekly.

“A big part of the group has been racing together for couple of years and they know each other. They know Brad, Brad knows them. The most important thing for Roubaix is to have strong team, a leader, but also different options.”

Geraint Thomas will be part of the Classics capaign and will co-lead with Wiggins in Roubaix, but Wiggins rode with some of the other guys who will be hoping to deliver Wiggins to the fairytale ending to his road career.

“We have options with Brad, ‘Yogi’ or Ian Stannard, Luke Rowe, Bernie Eisel, G Thomas, Andy Fenn, Christian Knees… We have a strong team, we showed that last year.”

“This year, we could be better, more experienced given what we learned from last year when ‘G’ and Brad were up there in the final.”

While Rowe and Stannard were the real stars in Qatar for Team Sky, Knaven couldn’t highlight just how important those six days could be for Wiggins and his Classics ambitions.

“This race is really important for Brad in the lead-up. He didn’t race a lot last year on the Flemish roads where there’s fighting all day. That’s what he’s getting used to here. You can see it’s not the easiest thing to do.”

“He’s getting better with that. He has the power, but it’s not about the power only, it’s the way of racing. He missed the splits here, but we will all be on a different level for Roubaix. It won’t be an issue. In 2011 here, he was in the front groups. He can do it and he will be ready for that in March and April.”