After taking second in the Tour de France, Romain Bardet is aiming to follow Thibaut Pinot by targeting a win in one of the season’s other Grand Tours before attempting to win the Tour in a few seasons time.

“I’m not ready to win the Tour for the moment,” said the 25-year-old in a long interview with L’Equipe on Friday, describing the gulf between himself and Froome as ‘enormous’.

“The idea is to talk to my coach and the team management. We’ll put each of the three routes in front of us and say, ‘what shall we do this year’. Anything is possible."

Bardet says it is his opinion that you need to be around 28 before you can win the Tour, whereas a win in the Giro or Vuelta is possible now at his age.

“Like Thibaut has said, you have to consider it. I’m at a stage of my career where I hope to be capable of winning a Grand Tour. That experience – I have to take it as soon as possible, and it won’t necessarily be at the Tour de France. If I dig my heels in, saying ‘I’m only doing the Tour’, until I’m 28, 30, there’s a chance I’ll never win a Grand Tour.”

With Pinot riding for FDJ and Bardet AG2R, both riders are likely to ride the Tour in 2017, although they may not target the GC if they are aiming to win another Grand Tour. Instead the duo will go stage hunting or seek to win the Polka Dot Jersey.

For Bardet, winning WorldTour stage races is also important in his development to hopefully becoming a Tour winner.

“It’s a process, a learning curve, because my teammates don’t have the experience of defending a leader’s jersey, and me, I don’t have the experience of wearing it. At the moment we’re not going to week-long races with the objective of winning them; we go to achieve the best result possible. Now, I must try to win them, and risk losing them. That’s the next step.”