Riding as fast as you could for as long as you could was the main tactic in the early days of road racing when Grand Tours could be won by hours. Now a minutes delay thanks to a puncture could ruin a riders chances over a three-week race and the sport is described as nothing less than chess on wheels. The intricacies and complexities of cycling are what makes it so appealing: an eye for opportunity and a quick mind are just as crucial to success as a 'big engine' or good form.

So how do you win a bike race? How do you cope with crosswinds, cobbles, elbows-out sprints, weaving your way through a teeming peloton? Why are steady nerves one of the best weapons in a riders arsenal and breakaway artists to be revered? Where do you see the finest showcase of tactical brilliance? Peter Cossins takes us on to the team buses to hear pro cyclists and directeurs sportifs explain their tactics: when it went right, when they got it wrong from sprinting to summits, from breakaways to bluffing.

Hectic, thrilling, but sometimes impenetrable watching a bike race can baffle as much as entertain.Full Gasis the essential guide to make sense of all things peloton.

First drawn into the sport while a student in Spain in the mid-1980s, Peter Cossins has been writing about cycling since 1993, contributing principally toCycling Weekly,Cycle SportandProcycling.The Monuments, his history of cycling's five greatest one-day Classic races, was published in 2014, followed in 2015 byAlpe dHuez, an appraisal of cyclings greatest climb. He lives in the Ariège in the heart of the French Pyrenees.