It was an interesting experience covering PBP 2019. there seems to have been a restatement of the principles of Randonnee, with sparse information on all fronts. Working from the tracking information was a bit of a shot in the dark. I got wind of Zigzag's early performance on here, so was able to predict the arrival of the first group at Loudeac, which was more information than the controllers at Loudeac had.
The actual leaders were accompanied by some of the Tandem Images film crew, so their colleagues lined up to shoot their arrival. The motorbikes accompanying them were directed off, so the arrival required knowledge of the numbering system, and I recognised Marko Baloh from LEL. He then disappeared onto the melee, and was told to move his bike when he parked it too near the control.
We could then follow Marko on the tracking, to gauge where the front group was. When I got back to Rambouillet I asked J.P. Chardon who had won. He told me that the velomobile had won, and showed me a picture of the velomobile, the three riders from the front group, and a prize Merino ram, on the finish line. He also showed me the classification, which was complicated by not allowing for start time.
ACP might be playing their cards close to their chest for data protection reasons, or they might not. There's so much politics surrounding the status of PBP as non-competitive, within a changed environment for long distance cycling, that it's hard to disentangle the various threads.
I'm very glad that I wasn't seeking to cover the performance of the front group. That would have entailed putting in a lot of effort, only to have it undercut within an hour of the apparent result.