UKC

Question for the serious road-racing geeks on here. I'm a casual fan and although I generally understand how race tactics work, I'm a bit confused as to why flattish stages invariably follow the exact pattern of a break forming, the peloton giving it a bit of a gap, then starting to chase in earnest hopefully in time to make the catch within a couple of km of the finish.

From reading around a bit, I get the impression that once a breakaway has formed, the peloton doesn't have to worry so much about further attacks, but conversely that if the breakaway is caught too early, a late attack has an increased chance of winning the stage. But I don't see why either of these should be the case - what's to stop another significant attack happening once the main break is away? And what's to stop someone launching an opportunistic attack with a few km to go and just speeding past the knackered breakaway riders who've been out front for the whole stage?

Also, a semi-related question: what would a flat tour stage look like if there was no communication of the overall situation to the riders, so they had to rely on what they could see or what their teammates could tell them? Would it be more interestingly unpredictable?

Riders do sometimes bridge up to a break but not once it's minutes ahead as it would be too difficult.

Late attacks do happen but are difficult as the pace of the peloton is much higher in the closing stages and it's hard for a lone rider to outpace them. Look at the late attack  by Lampaert yesterday and the frightening speed with which a pretty big gap was closed by the leadout trains.

They've experimented with radio bans but the riders and team management were dead against it.

To add the answer above, once a team has one rider in the breakaway they also have less motivation to send another rider to bridge the gap. Finding enough motivated riders to put in the extra effort to bridge that gap would be very difficult.

I’m not sure if the peloton caches the break too early, another break has an increased chance of staying away; it’s more that they would have to chase twice rather than once, so seek to avoid it. When the break has been caught it’s the high pace from the highly-motivated sprinters’ teams that prevents another successful attack. They do occasionally work though. 

What's to stop another significant attack happening once the main break is away?

As others have said, once the break goes it's often too late if the break is of a decent size. One of the main reasons is lack of collaboration, a good portion of teams not racing for the sprint/holding the leaders jersey will have someone in the break and hence won't support another break. It will be almost impossible to bridge a decent gap solo.

And what's to stop someone launching an opportunistic attack with a few km to go

Speed! Most sprinters teams have very good time trialers, some of whom are ex world champions such as Tony Martin. However, they normally keep their max efforts to a few KMs and hence the reason why you don't see the break caught too early. Sometimes the speed drops off within a few KMs to go if there is a spat amongst the sprinters teams and solo attacks can stay away, especially of the run in is technical and the wind is favourable.

Regarding communications, as Dave Kerr has said they have tried it and I remember the stage being so dull that the organisers thought the teams were on protest, when in fact no one wanted to act and disobey the team strategy. Plus relating it back to the break away, the Directors make the final call on if the break stays away depending on which riders are attempting to escape. This is relayed back via radios 

I don't think radios have anything to do with it... breaks have been going away and being caught since cycling in a peleton started.

there's a wide range of motivations at play between the various teams and riders.

The "big GC" teams for instance couldn't give a stuff about the breaks unless there is someone in the break that could threaten their leader's GC position.

On a mountain stage there is motivation to get riders into the break so that when the team leader catches the break they can gain the help from a lesser team mate (for a limited period) this is a huge advantage to the team leader - both psychological and physical

On a flat stage, the GC teams are less interested and only really seek to keep their leader out of trouble (unless a rival team's leader gets into trouble - then they will push hard. Instead it's normally the sprint teams seeking to control the break but the different sprint teams won't want to take more than their fair share of the chase for fear of not having the power to dominate the run in to the finish.

For riders in the break the motivation varies from "being in the shop window" and gaining publicity for the team (who might be too weak to get any stage wins or GC contention), to go for the intermediate sprints (either for their own campaign or to thwart that of a rival). In the mountains there is the real chance of a spotty jersey if they can get in all the breaks on mountain days. Plus on the occasion the break makes it you have a much greater chance of winning the stage if it's you against the 4-5 people in the break than if you were to compete in the whole peleton. - this is also a prime reason why breaks fail so often in the last few KM - it's not necessarily because the pack is stronger, often it's because the 3 or 4 riders up front stop working together and instead think of how they can save energy to beat their break away fellows, and therefore slow down significantly.

The lone break away though is where the real prestige is (and the potential for real heartbreak) Tony' Martin's reputation is built on audacious solo efforts (a couple of heart breaking catches n the last 20m of the race and a few where he just made it (not to mention a few world TT tittles)

The combativity award is given out to reward these riders (normally the one that's been out in the break the longest) and gives the team and sponsors a good photo op on the podium at the end of the day

Agree with what you say but it does overlook the fact that breakaways also form in 'one day classics' where no GC is involved.

Ultimately breakaways are 'allowed' because it requires too much energy to chase every rider down and those that stay behind are happy to gamble that the communal power of the peleton will bring them back.

Thanks all. I think that the point that I'd been missing is that once a break is away with a healthy lead, teams with riders in the break won't generally be interested in any further attacks, making it a lot easier for the sprinters' teams to control the peloton.

What I'm not sure about is just how big a group has to be before it becomes as energy efficient as a peloton ?

Sometimes late attacks can succeed

Lukas Postilberger won the first stage of the Giro last year, going clear with 1k to go, and still nobody is sure whether it was deliberate or not. He was meant to be part of Sam Bennett's leadout train, but somehow drifted off the front, realised he had a gap and went for it.

On mountain stages, or in one day races,  you often see the breakaway groups splitting and reforming, but on a flat stage in the tour there is normally too much firepower in the peleton, too many teams with an interest in a sprint finish. Except when you get crosswinds forming echelons - then you can end up with more riders in the lead group working together than in the following groups.

As to race radios, it would be interesting if the team cars couldn't talk directly to their riders. You could still have radios to warn riders of dangers ahead, such a striking farmers or a cloud of pepper spray. Traditionally there is a race moto with a blackboard to inform the peleton of time gaps. Take that info away and I think that you'd end up with more conservative racing  

On a typical flat stage, in theory a break away group of 7 could potentially cause a GC team a tough day out if all of the riders were physically equal and worked optimally together. But this would only get the break to a time advantage that wouldn't put the leader in trouble and then the sprinters teams would take over - so 7 riders could be riding against 30+ so the odds are against them.

That's not to say smaller groups or even a solo rider won't succeed and factors such as profile, wind direction, politics, team tactics and terrain are sometimes more of a deciding factor - the classic races are a perfect example of this.

Depends how strong the riders are in the break and how equally they share the work, and how many teams are motivated and willing to ride at the front of the peleton to limit their lead and catch them. 

Breakaways in classics are a bit different from stage race breakaways and succeed or fail for slightly different reasons. If it's a classic that sprinters can win they'll let the break go and chase it down just like in a stage race. In this case the break is likely contain riders from smaller teams looking for coverage and other such opportunists again, much like a stage race break. If it's not one the sprinters can win the break either isn't allowed the same lead or the break will contain genuine contenders after some sort of terrain that forces a selection like a pave section or a climb. It would be even more unusual for an early break containing the kind of riders who'd be in a tour break to survive in a classic like this.

The one last justification that has been missed is this: Occasionally the Peloton can't get organised and no team wants to take the hit to lead the chase-down, and someone in that break has a chance of winning a 5:1 sprint for a glorious stage win.  It doesn't happen much, but for some riders, especially younger or weaker riders - a 5% chance of a 1 in 5 win is a lot better than trying to out-bunch-sprint Gaviria.

Understood about the rider ability. I was thinking more in terms of the aerodynamics assuming equally motivated breakaway and peloton.

My rule of thumb  is peleton in full flight makes up 10s per km on a breakaway to catch the breakaway. The catch is usually ridiculously well judged to occur in the last kilometer. 

That isn't comparing like for like, though.  Thats a peleton on peel off mode, not 'steady state'.  The question is more about the steady state effort in the breakaway compared with the peleton at the same speed.