The 2026 CQ Ranking Manager Thread

[repre]

SENTJENS Sente, 46 points (11 picks)

Had him last year. Dude couldn't do anything with leader role at 2.2 level. So i doubt he will score much in leadout role at higher level. But at least he'll get some 5 point finish points in WT events.

 

[ingsve]

Had him last year. Dude couldn't do anything with leader role at 2.2 level. So i doubt he will score much in leadout role at higher level. But at least he'll get some 5 point finish points in WT events.

Ya, I would always be very wary about picking anyone from Alpecin given how top heavy they are in terms of points. If someone isn't one of the leaders then don't expect them to do much other than domestique duties.

 

[Squire]

From what I'd read, he was going to do one more WT stage race before Catalunya and they were yet to decide which at the time of the deadline. I was expecting Paris-Nice or Tirreno though, so given that UAE hands out the same amount of points now this is probably the worst option for everyone who doesn't have him.

I did some numbers just for fun.

If you take Pog's 2025 season and put Remco in the spot directly behind Pog in every race and stage (and minus the leader jerseys), he'd get 3239 points, compared to Pog's 5080. Which shows what a huge difference it is if you're a serial winner at that level.

And since I had those numbers in my spreadsheet it was easy to do a forecast for Remco's actual 2026 season.

I gave him:
Buitrago's 2025 Valenciana points
Pog's 2025 UAE Tour points
Pog's 2024 Catalunya points (very generous to Remco there)
Kept the 'one spot behind Pog's 2025 placing' in the Ardennes
Pog's 2025 Dauphiné (with Pog doing Suisse this year)
A repeat of his 2025 Belgian NC results
Kept the 'one spot behind Pog's 2025 placing' in the Tour but changed the final GC to 3rd
Kept the 'one spot behind Pog's 2025 placing' for the rest of Pog's season but changed WC ITT to 1st. It's quite a likely post-Tour schedule for Remco too I'd say, and even if he does the Tour of Britain instead it won't make much difference points-wise.

That sums to 3935 points, which is pretty much an absolute best case scenario for Remco unless he also wins the Tour/WC RR or sweeps the Ardennes or something. If you have him not winning a few of the stage races, that quickly brings the total down to around 3000 points. He's often pretty bad in the Dauphiné f.ex.

There are quite a few good picks that you can make if you don't pick Remco for this game. In practice, we're probably looking at 1-3 extra guys in the 500-800 area and 2-3 improved picks in lower price ranges. It's not inconcievable that this includes a couple of 1000+ scorers you wouldn't otherwise have. So it's pretty inconclusive what looks like the best strategy even if Remco delivers really well. But a good Remco season will at least go a long way in bringing the Remco teams really high up in the standings.

Edit: Oof, just noticed that the UAE Tour is bumped up from 2.WT3 to 2.WT1 this year. Didn't really pay attention to that part of DE's post. That makes a bit of a difference. 260 points for 1st instead of 190.

 

[ingsve]

If you take Pog's 2025 season and put Remco in the spot directly behind Pog in every race and stage (and minus the leader jerseys), he'd get 3239 points, compared to Pog's 5080. Which shows what a huge difference it is if you're a serial winner at that level.

One factor that is perhaps easily overlooked is the cumulative points in being the long time leader of a GT. For examples in the Tour the winner gets 150 more points than no 2 but Pog was also the leader for 13 stages which is 260 free points.

That became important when looking at Vingegaard ahead of last year. If you only look at his best year and hope that he can get back to those points one have to remember these types of points that won't be available in the Tour unless he can consistently beat Pog. As it turned out he did get a free ride in the Vuelta instead where he did have 14 days in the lead which gave 252 free points which turned out to be 29% of his profit.

 

[Samu Cuenca]

I initially wanted to have both Pogačar and Evenepoel in my team (it wasn't possible to have Vingegaard as well. I could of course have had both him and Pog last year if I had used the same strategy then), but then there wouldn't have been many points left for the remaining 31 riders, and I also wanted to save some lower scorers for my Emerging Riders team since I don't like to have the same riders in multiple games at a time.

 

[Devil's Elbow]

Dinham into profit after one day of racing. Be afraid, be very afraid.

 

[Salvarani]

Always nice to get the first points for a rider to get the year started.

 

[EvansIsTheBest]

CQ Points per race day
Pogacar 2025: 100,82
Eddy 2026: 100
Pogacar 2024: 93,54

 

[Panda Claws]

Dinham into profit after one day of racing. Be afraid, be very afraid.

'Only' on 33 teams too.

 

[ingsve]

Top of the rankings after Aus nationals

1​	Mason07​	147​
2​	armchairclimber​	118​
3​	karaev​	104​
4​	Pantani4ever​	85​
5​	Rufs​	79​

 

[Armchair Cyclist]

It's been interesting to read the thoughts and tactical processing behind major picks, but the ones I'd really like to hear about the reasoning behind are the guy who had a contract for BEAT in 2018, and hasn't been on a team since, or the 36 year old Greek rider who was on a Thai team, then left it, rejoined, and has now left again, or thought the best young rider pick available was a 20 year old kid released after 2 years by a Conti team rather than anyone snapped up by a WT development team.

 

[Panda Claws]

It's been interesting to read the thoughts and tactical processing behind major picks, but the ones I'd really like to hear about the reasoning behind are the guy who had a contract for BEAT in 2018, and hasn't been on a team since, or the 36 year old Greek rider who was on a Thai team, then left it, rejoined, and has now left again, or thought the best young rider pick available was a 20 year old kid released after 2 years by a Conti team rather than anyone snapped up by a WT development team.

First link is broken (fixed it below).
guy who had a contract for BEAT in 2018, and hasn't been on a team since

I'm curious too though.

 

[armchairclimber]

Well, my customary decent start down under.... and without Plapp this time. Glad I stuck with Dinham and Chamberlain.
Dinahm, Chamberlain and McKenzie all into profit. Nice.

 

[RedheadDane]

It's been interesting to read the thoughts and tactical processing behind major picks, but the ones I'd really like to hear about the reasoning behind are the guy who had a contract for BEAT in 2018, and hasn't been on a team since, or the 36 year old Greek rider who was on a Thai team, then left it, rejoined, and has now left again, or thought the best young rider pick available was a 20 year old kid released after 2 years by a Conti team rather than anyone snapped up by a WT development team.

Just out of curiosity, are they all on the same team?

 

[Armchair Cyclist]

Just out of curiosity, are they all on the same team?

They are, and it's not even you with the most irrational picks. @latinos has some very mainstream picks where he has spent most of his budget (some very popular, others a bit left field but not necessarily unique), but seems to have found himself with 37 points left for his final 15 slots, which have been filled* quixotically, to say the least.

*: not quite filled: he perhaps didn't realise that riders at zero points are available, and left the last three places empty.

 

[Shakes]

@Armchair Cyclist - Thank you for sending me a list linking PCS to CQ names. It's not completely valid going forward as names are subject to change and ideally its based on identifiers but works well enough.

I added it to everyone's team page. Here for @Armchair Cyclist ==>

Team — CQ Game

www.cqmanager.com

Might make another page, but not today, showing upcoming races with number of riders from our game competing.

 

[DJ Sprtsch]

'Only' on 33 teams too.

Dinham was the guy I forgot about when submitting my team. But couldn't get myself to do the change. Now let's see who will get the most points in 2026, Dinham or Arthur Blaise?

 

[Armchair Cyclist]

@Armchair Cyclist - Thank you for sending me a list linking PCS to CQ names. It's not completely valid going forward as names are subject to change and ideally its based on identifiers but works well enough.

I'm not sure what is an identifier on PCS: the URL for each rider is based on their name, not a reference number. I suppose it is possible that they would change the name as displayed without changing the URL, but I don't think PCS is as prone to changing it's mind about what they call riders as often as CQ do.

 

[jsem94]

Not sure why I severely overlooked Dinham..

 

[bminchow]

Dinham into profit after one day of racing. Be afraid, be very afraid.

Top 5's all year long!

 

[Hugo Koblet]

I did some numbers just for fun.

If you take Pog's 2025 season and put Remco in the spot directly behind Pog in every race and stage (and minus the leader jerseys), he'd get 3239 points, compared to Pog's 5080. Which shows what a huge difference it is if you're a serial winner at that level.

And since I had those numbers in my spreadsheet it was easy to do a forecast for Remco's actual 2026 season.

I gave him:
Buitrago's 2025 Valenciana points
Pog's 2025 UAE Tour points
Pog's 2024 Catalunya points (very generous to Remco there)
Kept the 'one spot behind Pog's 2025 placing' in the Ardennes
Pog's 2025 Dauphiné (with Pog doing Suisse this year)
A repeat of his 2025 Belgian NC results
Kept the 'one spot behind Pog's 2025 placing' in the Tour but changed the final GC to 3rd
Kept the 'one spot behind Pog's 2025 placing' for the rest of Pog's season but changed WC ITT to 1st. It's quite a likely post-Tour schedule for Remco too I'd say, and even if he does the Tour of Britain instead it won't make much difference points-wise.

That sums to 3935 points, which is pretty much an absolute best case scenario for Remco unless he also wins the Tour/WC RR or sweeps the Ardennes or something. If you have him not winning a few of the stage races, that quickly brings the total down to around 3000 points. He's often pretty bad in the Dauphiné f.ex.

There are quite a few good picks that you can make if you don't pick Remco for this game. In practice, we're probably looking at 1-3 extra guys in the 500-800 area and 2-3 improved picks in lower price ranges. It's not inconcievable that this includes a couple of 1000+ scorers you wouldn't otherwise have. So it's pretty inconclusive what looks like the best strategy even if Remco delivers really well. But a good Remco season will at least go a long way in bringing the Remco teams really high up in the standings.

Edit: Oof, just noticed that the UAE Tour is bumped up from 2.WT3 to 2.WT1 this year. Didn't really pay attention to that part of DE's post. That makes a bit of a difference. 260 points for 1st instead of 190.

I guess it's a fine exercise to try and work out what the absolute maximum a rider can score is, but I don't think that Evenepoel will get anywhere close to 3900 points. I did "realistic best case" (if that's a thing) for Evenepoel at some point with these results: Valenciana 1st, Catalunya 3rd, Amstel 3rd, Fleche 9th, Liege 2nd, Dauphine 3rd, Tour 3rd, Quebec 20th, Montreal 2nd, Worlds ITT 1st, Worlds RR 2nd, WC ITT 1st, WC RR 2nd, Lombardia 2nd, and in that scenario he would score approximately 2300 point. This was before UAE was announced, and then me might do something like Britain again, so even if I'm being generous, I think that 3000 is best case with his current schedule.

 

[Salvarani]

Evenepoel scoring around 3000, or a little bit more, would make him a good pick for his owners.

I find it more interesting to look at how his managers have spent the rest of their points though.

 

[Earns1985]

Evenepoel scoring around 3000, or a little bit more, would make him a good pick for his owners.

I find it more interesting to look at how his managers have spent the rest of their points though.

Yeah, in best case scenario for his owners Evenepoel will be a pick like Vingegaard last year. He would bring his owners in a good position, but the other picks will decide then how high their place will be in the end. If Evenepoel does not perform, that´s it than of course for his owners this year..

 

[Shakes]

I'm not sure what is an identifier on PCS: the URL for each rider is based on their name, not a reference number. I suppose it is possible that they would change the name as displayed without changing the URL, but I don't think PCS is as prone to changing it's mind about what they call riders as often as CQ do.

No worries, was just saying that some riders might not end up in overview if there is a name change. If everyone here could keep an eye on it we can tackle it then by just updating the name. Next year for a new game this mapping needs to be redone for riders not mapped yet. So that will be less work than now! Thanks a lot for your effort

Just FYI: only name changes at PCS will influence this. CQ is independent of names, that will just work.

 

[Shakes]

Does anyone know when CQRanking updates their rankings? Australian races are in but not added to total ranking for 2026 yet. Now basing all data on overall rankings, not sum of the individual races. Have the data for the latter as well but that's more work