I watched a lot of the Tour de France and if I had seen the paper before that I would have looked out for any of these formations with two riders in front. Were there any instances where they used these formations? I only remember single leader formations (often lead by Tim Wellens for an impressively long time), but there might have been other formations that I just missed.
> Were there any instances where they used these formations?
Half of it, when in echelon form during crosswinds. Which is pretty much the only situation where any of this will work in practice since as mentioned elsewhere many times you don't burn all your people at once. Energy isn't endless.
To add to sibling comment, in the peleton you generally dont have the luxury of choosing your formation down to such fine detail. Theres lots of other riders fighting for space.
And breakaways are rarely a team affair. You get some towards the end of mountain stages, but uphill all of this maths goes away (everyone is much slower and air drag matters less).
