Not sure if jokepost or not.In my view, Remco robbed half of the team of their duties / moment of glory: Remco effectively determined the race between km 180 and km 125, and further on between km 90 and km 25.
The Belgian team had other guys for that, but with Remco on the front, they had to stay in place and couldn't even show if they had legs. You saw e.g. Lampaert doing his job by pulling hard in the local rounds before the 2nd Flandrien circuit (the moment in the race they got rid of Ewan and some other sprinters). At that moment, Teuns indicated that they were drilling it too hard on the front. Lots of things went wrong in the Belgian team, but if you blame riders for not having legs, you can as well blame riders who had excellent legs and wasted all that energy for unnecessary moves...
You say it very well: "If Evenepoel had been used as a reserve leader..."
Think about it: "If Evenepoel rode the race as a reserve leader..." a role that was complementary to his job before the start: covering dangerous moves. But Remco himself choose not only to to his job, but he also choose to do all kinds of jobs he wasn't supposed to do.
Remco robbed the other Belgians to show they had good legs... lolwut? The other Belgians thought the tempo was too high? Then why the *** did they initialize the chase on Remco themselves? Why didn't they just sit back and let another team do that? Or is Evenepoel to blame for their sudden loss of intelligence and tactical sense as well? In fact, the best thing to come of all this is a meme that has started to grow on social media: blame Evenepoel. Be it cycling, politics or environment... i'm sure it's somehow Remco's fault.
He was talking to Pauwels in the team car during the race. I'm not sure he's thinking about the little camera on the dashboard at that time. He didn't seem to be thinking about it when he was saying "is this a joke or something". So i have no reason to believe he was holding back when Evenepoel pulled off the front and he complimented him for his job.I don't really think initial comments from Vantourenhout after the race are a great indicator as he would probably be very reluctant to instantly start a flame war and would have wanted to keep any criticisms at each other as confined as possible as his ass could be on the line