Philipsen is riding smarter than Halvorsen and Hodeg. Both sprints so far, Bennett has fought for Groenewegen’s wheel and Hodeg and Halvorsen have fought for Bennett’s wheel. The problem being that they have no chance of coming around Bennett (or Groenewegen if he holds Bennett off). Bennett has to go too early for that to work and he’s not going to do that when he’s on the back of the Jumbo train. Philipsen gave himself the chance to win today by getting the jump on the favourites.
I've been saying that for months. Philipsen is very good at positioning and getting into the right spots at the right time. But he's still lacking in pure speed. Look at his year so far. He won a stage in TDU, because Ewan got relegated. Otherwise, he would probably be leading the competition of most top 10 finishes without a win. He's had dozens of top 10 finishes, but he's never able to finish it off. In Calicornia, he had 4 top 10 finishes i believe. Once he lost to Jakobsen by a noselength. While Jakobsen didn't manage to get into another top 10 all week.
EDIT: by my counting, he had 22 top 10 finishes (GC's not included) of which he won 1, but only due to Ewan DQF. If he can work on his speed, he'll win bucketloads. But i'm still not sure this is what he's evolving into.