After a quiet start to the season in Australia wearing the rainbow jersey, Mats Pedersen came to the opening weekend in Belgium looking for a race to base his career on. He finished 66th in Omloop Het Nieuwsblad and 79th in Coone Brussel-Coone.

Trek-Segafredo teammate Jasper Steuben took an impressive win in Omloop and a fifth place finish in Courne.

With the Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix still a month away, Pedersen still has time to find top form. The rainbow jersey will steal the spotlight, but Pedersen, who just turned 24 in December, knows he is not yet in perfect form.

"Everyone thinks the stripes make you 100 times better, but they don't," Pedersen told Cycling News on opening weekend.

"I still have things to learn and I still have to grow in the races. I haven't really made a big step up from last year to this year."

The Dane, who was runner-up in his 2018 Tour of Flanders debut, also had no problem admitting that he is not necessarily at the top of Trek-Segafredo's classic hierarchy.

"Jasper showed again on Saturday that he is still a better rider than me in these races right now. That's what it's all about. If he wins, I'll be happy."

"Of course I want to win races too. That's why I'm a bike rider and that's why I won the World Championships. In Omloop, Jasper won because I wasn't good enough. That's the way it is. I would be happy if Edward Tuns won or Alex Kirsch won. Now we have to grow as a team. We got off to a good start and we have to keep going. As for me, of course I want to win, but it's not about the jersey, it's who I am."

As for his own condition, Pedersen was not particularly worried.

"I'm where I should be right now. But I'm confident that once Paris-Nice is over, I'll be 100% ready for the next Classic."

"I'm not sure if I'll be ready for the next race,"

"I'm not sure yet.

"I am happy with my form and form showing that I can still be there. The last 40km on Saturday, I couldn't have been there yet. I'm happy now."

As for the team as a whole, the 24-year-old made no bones about the fact that last year was nowhere near as good. John Degenkolb made the podium in Ghent-Wevelgem, but otherwise it was a spring in which all of Trek's classic riders underperformed.

But thanks to Stuyven, they made a strong start to their 2020 campaign.

"It was pretty good for the whole team, but especially for Jasper. He really deserved that win and to show that we are back on track and doing well after last year, which I would say was a disaster for us," he said

.

"What has changed is the mentality. Last year, after E3 was over, we riders told all the staff that we were sorry we did so badly. The next day in Ghent we had a good race, but after that it got bad again.

"Honestly, I don't know what happened, but right now I think it was last year's mentality. This year is much better. Everyone is happy and relaxed going into the race. You can see it in the way we race."