Yves Lambert of Vive le Vélo: “I felt like Max Verstappen for a while” | Vive Le Velo

Even with the yellow jersey on his lap as tangible evidence, that realization only slowly shines on Lambert. “I’ve seen the pictures on Sporza’s Instagram page, but it’s still hard to fathom who I defeated. It’s so crazy for words, you can’t believe it.”

“It’s very special. I had ambition this morning to get into the top ten. If you cross the finish line where big stars like Van Aert, Jana and Van der Poel win in such a course, that’s it. It’s not very clear. I’ve done it on any However, it is still unreasonable.”

Remarkably, unlike his teammates, Lambert did not opt ​​for the new Specialized helmet. Although that wasn’t the key to his success, he said. “I don’t think the helmet made much of a difference. I chose the old helmet because I haven’t had any competition with the new helmet yet. I still wanted to use the materials I was familiar with.”

“Maybe the difference was in the wet tyres. It made me a little slower in the straights, but a little faster in the corners. Today I felt like Max Verstappen.”

Wout van Aert had to swallow when Lambert ousted him from the throne, but number 2 showed himself mathematically and congratulated Lambert. “Wout has been really happy for me. We’ve both been also two-time Belgian test champions. It’s great that we’re now 1 and 2.”

“As Belgium, we are already doing tremendously in the field of time-testing. It is not clear that we are partnering with the world summit in this discipline. What we have achieved in recent years is tremendous. Perhaps Victor Campinaarts has laid the foundation for these.”

A few weeks ago, Lambert came under fire after his affair with Tim Wells on the Baloos Belgium Tour. This seems to be completely forgotten now. “I spoke with Tim at BC. He also said that we put him up tactically well. It happens more often than you think, this is the best sport.”

“It also made me wide, and I didn’t take my hands off the wheel. We shut it down and took the win. It might sound brutal to non-experts, but in fast races it happens a lot.”

Tomorrow Lambert can start the second stage in yellow. But how long can he hold the shirt? “It’s hard to say. We have to stick to our goals and that’s tomorrow’s race with Fabio Jacobsen. If someone wins and someone other than Wout takes second place, I’ll keep the jersey for another day.”

“All that comes now is a bonus. We must not focus on the yellow jersey, but on the victories. With Fabio we have the fastest player in the group and we will do everything we can to win tomorrow.”