They start the races, but then they are basically nowhere to be seen: they don't attack, they don't pull the peloton, they don't chase or help chases, most of them have disappeared from the head peloton / groups by the time TV arrives, and the remaining ones just hide in it. In the end, if it happens that there is 1 UAE rider left in a front group, he tries his luck (on one race, Christen tried to jump from 2^nd^ group to 1^st^ instead of relaying; Cosnefroy appeared in the last mile of 2 races), but that's it, they are not active.

And this is what is strange: last year they had no mercy for small races, they were actively trying to win about everything, even class 1 races, even with their C team.

One may hypothesise that they use those races as they used the GP of Québec: they simply hang around, considering them as a training session, without going far into the effort. Now... training for which objective?