New world champion Rui Costa will focus on the Tour de France in his first season with Lampre-Merida. His team will fully back his quest to finish high on GC in the world's biggest bike race.

Rui Costa took the biggest win of his career on Sunday when the Portuguese won the road race world championships in Florence. Now the Portuguese has set his sights on the 2014 Tour de France where he hopes to finish high on GC.

Costa has won the two most recent editions of the Tour de Suisse and started the Tour de France in splendid condition. In the world's biggest bike race, he has, however, been asked to sacrifice his own chances to work for the likes of Alejandro Valverde and Nairo Quintana.

This year his role as a domestique was very costly as he was asked to slow down to wait for Valverde who had been delayed by a mechanical on stage 13. Having started the stage with a top 10 position on GC, Costa lost more than 10 minutes and fell out of overall contention. He bounced back with two stage wins later in the race but was unable to improve on his 18th place from the 2012 Tour de France.

That lack of freedom was one of the reasons for his decision to sign a one-year contract with Lampre-Merida for the 2014 season. His new manager Giuseppe Saronni promises him full support in the Tour.

“With us, he wants to do try and do the Tour de France as a leader. Not for stages but to do a good general classification. He was a bit restricted at Movistar,” Saronni told Gazzetta dello Sport. “The idea is this: to bring Rui Costa into the record books of the Tour in the Lampre jersey. He’s a complete rider and he’ll also be a protagonist in the Ardennes classics, for instance.”

With two successive wins in the Tour de Suisse, two Tour de France stage wins and two consecutive podium finishes in the Tour de Romandie, Costa had plenty of value points that were needed by Lampre to secure a place in the WorldTour for next year. That was the starting point for the negotiations between the two parties.

“Up to that point, the team hadn’t shone and we need to gain some sporting merit points to be sure to get into the WorldTour,” Saronni said. “We had indications that the boy was out of contract at the end of the season and he wanted to go to a team that would give him different competitive experiences.”

According to Gazzetta dello Sport, Costa's one-year contract is worth 1 million euro but Saronni hinted that more may be in store for the world champion.

"He’s signed for a year with us, but we had already agreed that we would talk about it again in the spring," he said. "As for a bonus, let’s say that the world title adds value to the athlete’s image, but also to the team that he rides for.”

Costa will make his debut in the rainbow jersey on Sunday in Il Lombardia before bringing his season and time as a Movistar rider to a close in the Tour of Beijing.