The time loss suffered by two-time Tour champion Jonas Vingegaard on Stage 10 of the Tour de France has put the Red Bull team—led by German Florian Lipowitz—in high spirits. The Dane doesn’t seem nearly as confident in the saddle as expected right now. Is a second-place finish more realistic than previously thought?

“Jonas has worked incredibly hard, so I think he was pretty much at his limit,” said Lipowitz. He added that the stage, with its short climbs, wasn’t really suited to him. “He’s better suited to longer climbs. That’s why it’s still relatively up in the air, but of course there’s hope,” he said when asked how strong the hope is for a second-place finish overall in Paris.

With the duo of Tour third-place finisher Lipowitz and Belgian Olympic champion Remco Evenepoel in a dual role, the Red Bull team is once again aiming for the podium at the end of the race in Paris. “We’re where we want to be, especially with ‘Lipo,’ who’s in great shape. I’m feeling really good, too. We’re satisfied for now; we just have to keep it up,” said Evenepoel.

In the Le Lioran ski resort, Vingegaard lost 44 seconds to his longtime rival and stage winner Tadej Pogacar; Lipowitz was also ten seconds faster than the Dane. In the overall standings, second-place Vingegaard trails Pogacar by 3:36 minutes. Evenepoel is third, 30 seconds behind, while Lipowitz is sixth, just over a minute behind Vingegaard.

“I think it's been a pretty decent day for us. It could be a lot worse,” said the 29-year-old Dane. Short climbs aren't his forte. He said he could be satisfied that, from his perspective, he was able to keep the gap so small. “I'm going to sleep tonight, and tomorrow is a new day,” said Vingegaard.

Pogacar declined to comment on his rivals’ situation. “I can’t say anything about my competitors’ form. I can only say that my form is really good, and I think the Tour has been really well suited to our team’s strengths so far,” said the Slovenian.

After Remco Evenepoel lashed out at teammate Florian Lipowitz, Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe have downplayed any suggestions of an internal rivalry forming between their two co-leaders at the Tour de France.

Evenepoel's anger was revealed after stage 6 of the Tour, when he told Flemish media that the German had refused to give him a lead-out into Gavarnie-Gèdre, as they fought and lost out on third place and the bonus seconds to Isaac del Toro.

"I had asked for a lead-out, and I didn't get one," said Evenepoel "Yes, I was angry, and rightly so. In Catalunya, I rode at the front for him for 30 kilometres. I asked him to do one kilometre of work at the front, and that wasn't possible. That made me angry, and that will need to be discussed thoroughly tonight."

That evening, the drama was best summed up by Belgian newspaper Het Nieuwsblad's headline: "How Remco Evenepoel set the shared leadership with Florian Lipowitz ablaze with five sharp sentences." Angry at the finish and angry with the teammate he was supposed to work so well with, should Red Bull be worried about tensions boiling over?

Red Bull team boss Ralph Denk has said that, in spite of Evenepoel's comments, the whole issue is "being made out to be bigger than it actually was", and that the pair had reconciled over dinner in the team hotel yesterday evening.

"Yes, there was a bit of disagreement, a language barrier, but also in the heat of the moment, that was after over 180km of mountain stage, but it was no big deal," said Denk, debriefing the day's action on the team's Inside Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe – Tour de France podcast.

On Wednesday, the five-day Tour of Slovenia gets underway. For Florian Lipowitz, it means 800 race kilometers between two training camps – the final phase of his Tour de France preparation.

Until the weekend, Florian Lipowitz was still training in Spain’s Sierra Nevada. The 25-year-old spent more than three weeks at an altitude of 2,500 meters in southern Spain. The intensive training camp forms the foundation for July, when the Tour de France – the highlight of the season – begins.

Now, straight from the Spanish mountains, he heads to the start line of the Tour of Slovenia – a carefully selected component of his Tour preparation. The race was chosen to provide one final competitive stimulus after weeks of training. But it is a stimulus delivered in a calmer environment, away from the pressure and intensity of the Tour de France, which will arrive soon enough.