After losing Van Gils, Victor Campenaerts and Florian Vermeersch to wealthier WorldTour rivals, Lotto will instead count on the talent of young team leaders Arnaud De Lie, Lennert Van Eetvelt and Alec Segaert.
The team's seven new signs for 2025 include five development team riders, 23-year-old Lars Craps from Flanders-Baloise and 23-year-old Kiwi Reuben Thompson from Groupama-FDJ. The team's average age will fall from 26 in 2034 to 24.8 in 2025, below that of all the WorldTour teams.
Lotto are still trying to find a replacement for title sponsor Dstny but are virtually assured a place in the 2026-2028 WorldTour due to their successful points-scoring strategy in recent years. They were the ninth best ranked team in 2023 and 2024, and so are out of the relegation zone fight for the 2026 WorldTour. Their results from 2024 mean they can choose which WorldTour race they ride in 2025. Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe have signed Van Gils but Lotto will keep the points he scored in 2023 and 2024.
Heulot has again crafted a careful strategy so that Lotto continue to punch above their weight, despite downsizing.
"The idea is really to adapt the programme to our squad of riders. There will only be 25 of us next year, while there were 28 of us this year, with four riders coming from our development team," Heulot told French websiteCyclism'actu in a revealing interview.
"Our race calendar has been reduced and adapted to our abilities. We will once again skip the Giro, even if at the beginning of the year I wanted to be able to start the return to the WorldTour by trying to ride the three Grand Tours."
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Heulot suggested the team has performed at 130%, way above expectations, but knows their success could falter, especially if De Lie struggles in the sprints or is injured.
"It's a disappointment to lose Maxim Van Gils but 11 of our riders won races, and there are some great new young talented riders coming up," Heulot pointed out.
"We are rethinking our plans but once again we'll try to turn our limitations into opportunities. Our objective is to stay up there [in the races] despite the setbacks at the end of this year."
De Lie made his Tour de France debut in 2024 and impressed in a series of semi-Classics in the spring before a more uneven second part of the season, albeit with victory in the Belgian National Championships one later highlight.
"Arnaud De Lie is not a pure sprinter so the hillier it is, the better. I think Arnaud is one of the sprinters capable of getting over those sorts of challenges and then going on to win," Heulot said.
"We have done some great things in the past with Florian Vermeersch and he was a joint leader with Arnaud. But Cédric Beullens, Jenno Berckmoes and Brent Van Moer love the Classics, too so we'll be up there with them, too."
"We also have Lennert Van Eetvelt. He won the UAE Tour and the Tour of Guangxi but we hope he will be spared in 2025 from all the injuries he had in 2024. He'll make his debut in the Tour de France, but rather than aim for the general classification, probably more to see what the race is like and go for some specific stages."
Counting every penny and every point
Maxim Van Gils in action at Strade Bianche (Image credit: Tim de Waele/Getty Images)
Lotto have lost Vermeersch, Campenaerts and most recently Van Gils. but the latter appears to be a calculated move by Heulot, who perhaps can use the fee he obtained to invest in young riders and shore up the team's budget until a new second sponsor is secured.
"I don't agree with this kind of phenomenon but I think we're going to have to get used to it, when faced with these teams that don't respect their contracts," Heulot said of Van Gils' strategy of levering his points haul to secure a better deal elsewhere and force a divorce from Lotto.
"We had a vision for the next three years with Maxim, Lennert Van Eetvelt and Arnaud De Lie, so it forced us to make choices."
19-year-old Belgian super talent Jarno Widar could be the next rider to be enticed away by big-budget WorldTour teams. He will ride for the Lotto development team in 2025 and then step-up to the professional tram in 2026. However his head is already being turned by big offers from rival teams. Heulot is ready to fight to keep Widar.
"We are working on it but what is certain is that we are not going to let it happen every time and we will probably show our teeth," he said, warning that professional cycling is becoming more like the soccer transfer
"The problem is often about money," Heulot said, calling for equality but doubtful about the effectiveness of a budget cap.
"Obviously, it is money that makes the difference. We are managing to survive with a budget closer to 15 million than 20 million, that inevitably leads us to think about every penny. They're attacking our heart; our rider development is the core success of the team. We've realised that teams do not hesitate to go after our best rider.
"We will have to legislate all this very quickly at UCI level for the simple reason that if there are four or five teams that have all the best riders in the world, people will lose interest in the sport."
Heulot just hopes to find a second sponsor and enjoy a successful 2025 season, then build for the future in the WorldTour in 2026.
"We'll start the season with only Lotto as a title sponsor but it's important that we can expand our squad when we return to the WorldTour.
"I hope everyone can move up a gear. We won 25 races this year but I do not want to set a similar goal because cycling is not an exact science. Like always, we have to show resilience."
Stephen is the most experienced member of the Cyclingnews team, having reported on professional cycling since 1994. He has been Head of News at Cyclingnews since 2022, before which he held the position of European editor since 2012 and previously worked for Reuters, Shift Active Media, and CyclingWeekly, among other publications.
