page_title: 2011 Team Europcar season
section_title: Tour de France
hierarchical_section_title: 2011 Team Europcar season / Grand Tours / Tour de France
caption_attribution_description: English: Cadel Evans rides ahead of Thomas Voeckler on Briancon during stage 18 of the 2011 Tour de France.
context_page_description: The 2011 season for the Team Europcar cycling team began in January with La Tropicale Amissa Bongo and ended in October with Yukiya Arashiro's performance in the Japan Cup. It was the team's twelfth season as a professional cycling team, although its second as a UCI Professional Continental team. Unlike fellow former UCI ProTeams Cofidis, FDJ, and Geox–TMC, they did not seek the status for 2011, thus in order to compete in any UCI World Tour event, the team had to be invited in advance, by race organizers.
  The season was one of the best in the team's history, with 20 victories and a Tour de France with multiple noteworthy performances. Team leader Thomas Voeckler wore the yellow jersey as race leader for ten days; the second such occurrence of his career, after also leading for ten days in 2004. Unlike that race, however, Voeckler poised himself as a serious overall contender and took fourth place overall; the best result by a French rider since 2000. While he spent most of the Tour riding in Voeckler's service, Pierre Rolland won one of the marquee stages, up Alpe d'Huez, eventually finishing 11th overall and winning the young rider classification.
context_section_description: The Amaury Sport Organisation announced the wildcard entries to the Tour de France in January, much earlier than in past years. Team Europcar had among their number French national champion Voeckler, though he lost that title shortly before the Tour, a de facto national hero after he wore the yellow jersey for ten days in the 2004 Tour de France. Confident of their inclusion, they were indeed among the four teams added to the 18 UCI ProTeams obligated to attend. Voeckler was named as the squad leader, with Charteau and Kern his top support riders. Gène was also named to the squad, the first black rider in the Tour's history. The team started quietly, with no rider finishing near the front of the race on stage 1 at the Mont des Alouettes and 13th of 22 teams in the stage 2 team time trial. The team did not really figure into the sprint finishes that happened early in the Tour, having left their best sprinter Chavanel off the squad for the Tour. Turgot's eighth place in stage 7 was their highest such finish.
  Stage 9 was the Tour's toughest stage to that point, with seven climbs during the 208 km (129.2 mi) parcours. Voeckler, who entered the day in 19th place a minute and 29 seconds down in the overall classification, made a high-powered breakaway with Luis León Sánchez, Sandy Casar, Juan Antonio Flecha (all of them stage winners in one or more previous Tours) and Johnny Hoogerland. Some 36 km (22 mi) from the finish line, a car from France Télévisions sideswiped Flecha and Hoogerland, the two front riders at the time, sending both off their bicycles and Hoogerland crashing into a barbed-wire fence. After a few uncertain minutes while he appeared to want to wait for Flecha and Hoogerland to rejoin them, Voeckler then drove the breakaway hard. With prior race leader Thor Hushovd well back, the yellow jersey was bound to change hands, and Voeckler's time gap over the main field at the time of Flecha and Hoogerland's crash made him very likely to be the rider to take it. Voeckler's efforts left him unable to sprint at the end of the stage, and Sánchez won, but his near four-minute time gap over the peloton gave him the yellow jersey by a minute and 49 seconds over Sánchez and two minutes and 26 seconds against the best-placed overall favorite, Cadel Evans in third place.
  The overall standings did not change until stage 12, on Bastille Day, which ended with the hors catégorie climb to Luz Ardiden. Voeckler finished ninth on the day, ceding 20 seconds to most of the race's top overall riders, but still had sufficient time in hand to remain race leader by nearly two minutes. Rolland finished at his side for tenth on the day. Voeckler had said the night before that he expected to lose the jersey on this stage. After the peloton mostly stayed together in stage 13, popular expectation for stage 14, including two first-category climbs on course and another hors catégorie climb at the finish (Plateau de Beille), again was for Voeckler to lose the jersey. But he not only retained the jersey, he also finished with the main group of overall favorites, losing time to only three riders and actually putting time into other riders such as Damiano Cunego and Tom Danielson. Voeckler himself again expressed his surprise at his successes, saying "I was very surprised to be with the best riders up the Plateau de Beille climb. I don't know how far I can go." Stage 16 ended with a lengthy descent, from the second-category Col de Manse. Voeckler lost time to nearly all the race's top riders, and expressed after the stage his certainty that he could not win the Tour, but he remained race leader.
  Stage 18 was undoubtedly the most difficult in the Tour, incorporating three hors catégorie climbs, including the Col du Galibier at the finish; as such, race organisers defined the stage as the race's queen stage. When Andy Schleck, who began the day two minutes and 36 seconds behind Voeckler, surged away from the race's top riders 60 km (37 mi) from the finish and quickly made it to the morning breakaway, it seemed all but certain that he would become the 
caption: Voeckler riding behind Cadel Evans during stage 18, the second-to-last day he wore the yellow jersey.
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