Turns out that Rock Racing’s Francesco Mancebo has only about a one-minute lead over Astana’s Levin Leipheimer and other top contenders at the Tour of California.

Because of poor weather conditions Sunday, race officials neutralized the scoring for the G.C. at the start of the finishing circuit in Santa Rosa. Mancebo had a lead of about 1 minute 15 seconds over the elite group of chases that included Leipheimer, Columbia-High Road’s Michael Rogers and Garmin-Slipstream’s David Zabriskie.

Although that gap grew to 2 minutes during the three circuits, it didn’t affect the overall scoring because the field had been frozen at the start of circuits because of officials decision to neutralize the race. The decision was made ostensibly for safety reasons to protect the riders in the event of a huge pileup on the slick road surface.

The decision, which reportedly was made early in the stage and communicated to race teams, explains why Astana didn’t work harder to pull back Mancebo on the circuits. At the time, it had appeared to be a tactical error to let him get away and put another minute into Leipheimer. In actuality, with the race neutralized, Astana had no more impetus to chase.

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