Simon was always on target for team leadership at the 25 August to 16 September Grand Tour but the decision to start Adam in support was recently made with an eye to a longer career progression.
“We discussed post-Tour de France the idea to race Adam as well,” Mitchelton-Scott sports director Julian Dean said. “Obviously the Tour de France wasn’t what we’d hoped for Adam, but what it did highlight is that there are some things to work on, with him but also for the whole team in general."
The 2018 Vuelta a España will be broadcast LIVE on SBS Viceland with streaming available on the Cycling Central website and SBS OnDemand Apps from 2am Sunday 26 August.
Dean said the pair will have different roles at the three-week race with positive progression over the span of three weeks of racing.
“The idea is to continue the development of Adam and Simon by taking them both to the Vuelta, giving them another Grand Tour experience and trying to target the areas that we haven't got right, including getting some consistency across the three weeks.
“The objective still stays the same. Simon will be our designated leader and Adam will be going purely in a support role of Simon in the big picture.
“We want to get them through the first week as well as possible and look at the back end of the race; the stages in Asturias and Andorra are really going to be where the results are made.
“Obviously we'd still like to aim for a podium at the Vuelta. That would be a great outcome for us, but if we look back at the past Grand Tours we’ve done these last two years, we’ve got some work to do and our overall objective is to make a good progression throughout the whole race.
“Our key performance indicator will be that we have come into the key period and Simon is able to maintain or if not gain position in those last ten days, whether that be from 15th to eighth or eighth to fifth."
The other six supporting riders for the Vuelta have yet been announced.
