PARIS — Think Tour de France and you think bikes, but what keeps things moving behind the scenes for the teams in the world's preeminent two-wheeled event are the countless cars, trucks, and buses following the race.
La Grande Boucle — the Great Loop — is often a grueling three-week slog, so the vehicles need to be versatile and reliable and always ready to go, over the bone-jarring cobblestones of Roubaix, up the steepest Pyrenean climbs, and down the superfast, twisty Alpine descents.
The EF Education–Drapac p/b Cannondale team invited Business Insider to check out its fleet at the Tour. Take a look at the vehicles up close and in action:
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Checking out the bikes and Tour tech is neat, but it's also fun to poke around behind the scenes and hop into some of the cars. Above, the lead race car of the EF Education First–Drapac team for the 2018 Tour, the Škoda Superb, which has a 2-liter diesel engine with 180 horsepower — hardly a beast, yet a nimble enough wagon for a grand tour.
This model is a few years old, but the latest version of this car would cost in the neighborhood of £28,500 in the UK (about $37,350 USD).
These EF-Drapac Škodas are basically the same as those sold to the public, but with the Tour cars the suspension is raised after purchase and the cars are rehomologated, or legally recertified. The normal suspension can't cope with the weight of the coolers, bikes, gear, and racks, I'm told — they'd just bottom out.
The Czech carmaker Škoda is a wholly owned subsidiary of the German Volkswagen Group, and the Superb model is one of the most popular choices for Tour teams. Škoda is also the official car of the Tour, supplying 250 vehicles.
This is one of the team's two cars that go in the race and follow the riders for the 21 stages and 2,000 or so miles around France.
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