Totally agree about too big a caravan.
No minivans though, riders and drivers can’t see around them. There is actually a max height requirement already in the rules for UCI races. For example, a Subaru Outback wagon is too tall. Not that you don’t see them in races all the time.
No one dares mention carbon footprint….
And second team cars in the caravan are usually excessive. Exceptions for bad weather.

After working the Tour Of Utah, I have new understanding of what it means to work through he caravan. My moto and I were only dealing with the breakaway cars. That was intense enough.

that much less “road furniture” existed back when . . . but even race radios don’t prevent Gomez-Gomez doodsmaks.

As for races being decided by flat tires and other sorts of mechanicals—that sort of stuff happens every weekend: you drop a chain in a regular old boring USCF road race and if you can’t sweep that sucker back onto the chainring before the pack has gone by, odds are that your race just ended.

It sort of irks me to see pro riders hanging on to the team car getting a ‘brake adjustment’ at 60 kph, then motor-pacing through the caravan to get back into the bunch; not to mention the more flagrant abuses pulled to get riders like Cavendish back in.

And that brings me back to wanting to shrink the caravan so that it only includes neutral service vehicles (including both nutritional and mechanical service) and medical service vehicles. I.e. take the team vehicles out completely, and let the pros race without leashes. Granted, doing this would mean less sponsor ‘impressions,’ but it would also reduce per-race costs quite a bit, and make the racing safer.

And if a race gets decided on a mechanical . . . well that would be a kick in the pants to the mechanics and equipment sponsors, wouldn’t it?

    With so much coverage of every pro race you have to believe that if all the cars/motorcycles had radios then there would be a network in place for emergencies with regards to rider injuries.
    There is also new technology that riders can use to keep up on the course while on the road, Garmin are using theirs for more than show. They can program their “on board computers” to give them all kinds of useful information, hardly need to study the route book when the info is at your finger tips.
    What ever happened to team mates giving up their wheels and bikes if necessary? Maybe they just aren’t as well prepared as they need to be make a fast switch in race conditions, that can be corrected.

couldn’t the ToC use celebrity ardoisiers? This is California, after all.

This, perhaps?

then they would actually be used for rider safelty.

if every other team’s signal wasn’t already monitored by the rest of them. Pretty straightforward affair.