Team BridgeLane: Penalising Santos Festival of Cycling leader Whelan was an error

James Whelan (Team BridgeLane) would have been heading into stage 2 of the Santos Festival of Cycling with a seemingly unassailable lead after finishing the opening day with a solo that saw him cross the line nearly a minute-and-a-half ahead of his nearest rivals, were it not for a motor pacing penalty which the team described as an an 'error made on their behalf'.

Whelan, when asked about the penalty that cut his potentially victory delivering gap was clearly disappointed but diplomatic in his response.

“It’s super disappointing. I won’t dwell on it too much there are quite a few details that you can look into that suggest it's not necessarily the correct decision but we will focus on today’s race and go from there,” he said before the race start.

So what were those circumstances?

The one minute penalty was applied for motor pacing, which under National Road Series recognised mishap exemption conditions can be done for a maximum of 2km. Team Manager, Andrew Christie-Johnston said he wouldn't deny that it was done for longer, after Whelan had a mechanical just after the start of the race in the neutral zone, but that the circumstances left them with little option.

"When Jimmy notified us we were team car 17 parked at the start, still in the convoy, trying to get out of the start area so it took us a fair while to get to him, but we weren't flustered by that," Christie-Johnston told Cyclingnews. "We thought 'that's okay. It's in the neutral, he has come through the entire peloton, all the commissaires, and I'm sure they'll hold the race up."

"But then we got to Jimmy and he pulled over. We did a bike change and whilst in the process of doing the bike change the tail vehicle of the race went past us and they obviously