Shortly before the start of the Tour de France 2024, the Visma team made headlines with its mobile “Control Room”. The LIVE data acquisition on the route was prohibited from the UCI at the time. In the 2025 season there is now a new attempt – with a decisive change.
The vertebrae was great when the Visma team at the Tour de France 2024 rolled out with its own “Control Room”, a minibus in which data from the race and the driver can be recorded in real time. The competition sensed an unauthorized advantage and took a protest. After a short examination, the UCI prohibited the use of the new “secret weapon” and banished it from the route.
In the 2025 season, the Vingegaard team wants to use the advantages of technology again. This time, however, not directly on the route, but in the Dutch headquarters in the Bosch. In the future, the “Control Room” should be during the races, record the live data, analyze and pass on directly to the team management on site.
Vingegaard team adheres to technical help
“After we have checked things over the winter, we have come to the realization that the Control Room offers us only a low added value in the races. That is why we will not see much of it anymore. However, we continue to stick to the concept and will be stationed in our High Performance Center,” said Performance boss Mathieu Heijboer to “Idl Pro Cycling”.
With the help of the data recorded, you can see, among other things, whether the opposing teams drive rather offensive or rather defensive. Numerous values are filtered and forwarded directly to the team vehicle. “In this way, the coaches can concentrate fully on the race and do not have to look for the information themselves,” said Heijboer, who expressly emphasized not to make the drivers into “PlayStation” characters that are simply controlled.
“The drivers still have to make decisions within seconds. And there is no direct connection from the Control Room to the driver. We pass our information on to the trainers and in the end they have to decide whether they pass on this information to the driver or not,” said the performance boss.