UCI Professional Continental Team LPR Brakes – Farense Vini, the home of Italian Stars Alessandro Petacchi and Danilo Di Luca, have said they are going to try to raise the team’s profile by applying for a ProTour license.
Currently the team has won three stages and holds both the Magila Rosa and the ciclamino jersey in the centennial Giro d’Italia.
The team hopes that acquiring a ProTour license will give the team automatic invitations to most prestigious races since they have missed out on receiving wildcard entries for some of the key races this season.
Although ProTour teams normally gain access to all the major classics, organizers have excluded ProTour teams from the start list in the past. The prime examples of this are Astana’s exclusion from last year’s Tour de France and the debacle with the Unibet team in 2007 that ended up pushing a sponsor out of the sport and lengthening cycling’s unemployment line.