Video - Visma team boss Plugge driving during DSQ towing incident | Sticky Bottle

Visma Lease a Bike team boss Richard Plugge often likes to present himself as a smartest and purest guy in the room, but he was sanctioned today for towing Axel Zingle (Photo: Tim van Wichelen-Cor Vos)

Visma Lease a Bike has been forced to come out and apologise after one of its riders, Axel Zingle, was caught that an outrageous tow off a team car to get back to the bunch at E3 Saxo Classic (1.UWT). And, to add to their embarrassment, it was team boss Richard Plugge who was driving the car.

While the practice of towing riders back to a bunch, or getting a sticky bottle from a team car, is common and is not exactly a mortal sin, it is rarely captured on TV as it happens at the back of the race.

However, any effort to use a car to get back to a race after being dropped, or to have any significant influence on the result, is a major no-no. Plugge has been known to comment on how others should run their teams, meaning the incident is an embarrassment for him.

The problem for Visma-Lease a Bike in this case was that a Lotto fan by the roadside captured the incident in a video, which was shared and went viral.

Zingle was disqualified and fined; the Frenchman and his team informed with about 10km to go that he was being taken out of the race.

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The rider had punctured and was being brought back after that incident, though taking such a blatant - sustained and high-speed - tow off the car, not even a sticky bottle, looked awful.

"We received a report 10 kilometres from the finish line that Zingle had been taken out of the race," said team manager Maarten Wynants. "At first we didn't know what it was about, but later we heard there were images of him hanging onto the car.

"Once again: we regret the incident and accept our apologies. Just because something like this happens frequently in races does not give us the right to do the same."

Zingle was given a yellow card and was deducted 100 UCI points. Plugge also got a yellow card and was fined 500 Swiss francs.