stage hunter
Regular
I think we can both agree that Del Toro faced a genuine dilemma - he didn't have any good options, just bad and worse... Which of those is which we'll disagree on, but worth noting he came away with 2nd rather than 3rd, which for a 21 yr old in his second GT is pretty good.
In reality, UAE screwed this up, as @mididoctors has emphasised, by a) letting WVA get in the break, b) not getting a UAE in and then c) not controlling it, so Wout was available for the descent. If they'd kept the break at 3-4 minutes or so then Wout would have pulled a bit up Finestre and then popped. Presumably they wanted the break gone to get bonus seconds out of the picture (sprint halfway up Finestre and on the stage).
The next mistake, possibly, was Del Toro closing Carapaz himself at the first attack, instead of using his team, though EF had been smashing it so I'm not sure what he had to work with at that point, will have to rewatch that.
I think it's pretty clear that with such a long hard climb Del Toro and his DS were worried about his ability to cope with it and were genuinely concerned he might pop. He was very conservative in how he closed (progressive rather than snap closing). He genuinely believed that if he worked on the climb he'd be mugged by Carapaz and the elastic would snap. Given Carapaz was throwing in attacks all over the place (e.g. when Gee caught up and was leading them, why Gee? Why Carapaz?) he was definitely not wrong about this. Carapaz would have gone over the top, snapped the elastic, and given his descending would likely have opened the gap further on the descent. The moment Del Toro went over his limit he'd be mincemeat.
Simon was incredibly strong and underestimated by everyone, inc. notable posters here
When they come over the top everything is still marginal, Yates had what, 1:40? They played a bit of call-my-bluff and neither were bluffing, Yates met Wout and the time gap explodes in a very short space of time. Game over.
1-40 was too much with WVA waiting up the road. If they realised this was the case they need to be much closer at the top. I think Del Toro on his own with no Wout claws enough back even at 1-40. Him fretting about Carapaz and Wout up the road probably made him realise it was gone. He should have ridden tempo much further down the climb. They started playing cat and mouse when the gap was 20 seconds. That was the killer.
