Laurence Petit dropped the F-bomb after Paris-Roubaix. Along with teammate Stephane Cung, he rode like a veteran on the cobblestones of northern France.

Pitti then crashed on a corner before the Templube cobblestone section with 33km to go, suddenly losing contact. He was in a group of five chasing the winner, Mathieu van der Pol, when he suddenly lost his chance for the podium.

"I am disappointed for myself. Looking back on my race, I'm happy with seventh place, but I could have been on the podium," he told Cycling News, Escape Collective, and other media in the center of the Roubaix velodrome.

"My head got big, I made a mistake and crashed and got out of the bunch.

"I went too fast in the gravel corners. I made a bad decision and crashed. I tried to recover and went full throttle but Pedersen and Pollitt were there and it was difficult to recover."

After finishing fifth and seventh, Pitti hugged Kühn and apologized for his crash.

"I let the team down today," Pitti said.

"We were not able to show what we can do because of the crash. Without that mistake, we could have used the number of people in front of us to execute our race plan."

"I think we could have used the number of people in front of us to execute our race plan.

Pitti, like everyone in the 2024 peloton, may be a few steps below van der Pol, but he is without a doubt the revelation of the spring classic.

She won the Cadel Evans Great Ocean Road Classic in January. He followed that up with an impressive run in Paris-Nice, finishing 15th in the Milan-San Remo and Bruges-Des Pins classics, and joining the attack in nearly every race from Coone-Brussel-Coone to Ghent-Wevelgem.

His 2024 results put him in the top 15 in the standings, and he has a contract with Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe for 2025.

"I didn't run a Classic last year, so this is my first real Classic season.

"I've been able to race alongside guys like Mathieu Van Der Pol and Wout Van Aert, and I've been able to get up there in the races.

"I hope to come back to the Classic next year and fight for a win or a podium finish."

Cung had no regrets about Pitti's crash and knew that Grupama-FDJ was a true classic team this spring, along with Alpecin-Deceuninck and Lidl-Trek.

The Swiss ruled well throughout the race, but his fitness ran out and he finished fifth, 15 seconds behind the Paris-Roubaix podium contenders in the Philipsen-Pedersen-Pollitt sprint.

"I was completely empty and couldn't follow in the second sector at the end. But I have no regrets or disappointment," he told Cycling News.

Cung and Petit, like the rest of the field, could only quietly bow their heads and accept van der Pol's dominance.

"If you're on the same level as everyone else, you can't do what he does," explained Petey.

"He really is on a higher level than anyone else. We tried to go after him, but he was getting further and further away from us. There is only so much you can do with a rider like him. What he did was impressive.

Kühn added, "All I can say to Mathieu is, 'Wow! ' is all I can say. He was on another level. He is the best in the world, a step above the rest."

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