While Tour de France contenders battle to gain time on their rivals, sprinters seek stage wins and breakaway specialists sniff out opportunities, road captains are keeping an eye on everyone and everything.
Every team has one, but their role is not always obvious, either for fans watching along the side of the road, or for those glued to their television sets at home.
But the road captains, the riders who exude "calmness" and "selflessness", are the ones who organise their teammates, protect their team leaders and act as the squad's brains on the road.
One of the most experienced road captains at the Tour is Australian Luke Durbridge of Jayco-AlUla.
"I think experience, knowledge, just selflessness. He's just in there for the team," his sporting director Mathew Hayman, a former Paris-Roubaix winner, told AFP.
Durbridge, 35, is one of the elder statesmen in the Tour, riding the Grand Boucle for the 12th time this year.
One of his strengths is "to be able to have a level of calmness in a hectic situation", added Hayman.
"To call a spade a spade as well... If we're doing a debrief about what happened, he's honest."
Durbridge's willingness to sacrifice and race nous were in evidence during the mountainous third stage to Les Angles where he was dropped on a climb but battled back to join the lead group and then still had the presence of mind to look after his teammates.
"He came back with a second group, got bottles from the cars, gave them to Plappi (Luke Plapp) and Mauro (Schmid) and within three kilometres, they're in a breakaway," recalled Hayman of a scorching hot day in the saddle when temperatures reached 40C.
"If they didn't have those bottles of water, they wouldn't have been in the breakaway.
"So, that's the race head. That's not a guy in his first tour, just happy to get back on the bunch. He's thinking next step. He's always thinking about the others."
'AMAZING ROAD CAPTAIN'
French teenage prodigy Paul Seixas spoke about his Decathlon CMA CGM road captain Tiesj Benoot before the Tour began, stressing how important the Belgian's role would be.
"He's already experienced one of his leaders winning a Grand Tour," said the 19-year-old.
"That experience counts for a lot in a Grand Tour over three weeks, to make the right effort in the right moments and to be managed well by him in the team."
Benoot was the road captain at Visma-Lease a Bike when Jonas Vingegaard won the Tour.
Road captains might have to bypass their own ambitions to challenge for a stage win to instead look after the interests of the team, in particular its leader.
"I'm happy to do it," Benoot told AFP in January at a training camp in Spain.
"With Jonas the objective was crystal clear: I did not even think about getting into a breakaway, I was very proud of my role.
"When you're the teammate (of a contender) in cycling, the biggest victory that you can have is winning the Tour de France.
"My strength is being calm when the others are stressing; that helps me to make good decisions," added Benoot.
"A road captain needs peripheral vision.
"You have to make decisions quickly because the sports director in the team car sometimes doesn't have the images, or they get them later. When they take a decision, it's too late."
Seixas has more than one cool head around him.
Luke Rowe – who was Sky's road captain during their dominant Tour years when Bradley Wiggins, Chris Froome, Geraint Thomas and Egan Bernal won the yellow jersey – is now one of Decathlon's sporting directors.
He also wrote a book about the role.
"Luke was an amazing road captain," Froome told AFP this week.
"I honestly don't think there are many names that even come to mind that would parallel him in his ability to read the race, to communicate with everyone."
Rowe's experience will be invaluable for Seixas, Froome said.
"I honestly don't think he could be in better hands."