After two years of dominance at the Tour de France, it is all change at Team Sky. Where in July 2012 and 2013 it was virtually impossible to get near the “Death Star” – as their colossal black bus is nicknamed – at stage starts and finishes due to the crush of media and fans, it has suddenly gone suspiciously quiet. The action is elsewhere, around Astana and AG2R. Not even the presence of Alastair Campbell on Sunday could create a buzz.

Chris Froome’s crashes and the virus that cost Richie Porte his chance of a high finish mean that the British team have suddenly found themselves back in the position they were in 2011 and 2010, when their then-leader, Bradley Wiggins, was absent – in 2011 physically due to a crash, in 2010 spiritually due to his inability to race at his level of 2009, and the pressures of leadership.

The talk two-and-a-half weeks ago centred on Froome being at the same level as when he dominated the race in 2013, and of Sky’s team being the strongest they have fielded, not to mention Dave Brailsford’s speculation that he would like to win the Tour with a French rider. In the final week of the Tour, the French are doing quite a good job on their own of progressing towards a Tour win in the future, while Sky’s Tour is now about salvaging something – anything – from the rubble.

Their plight was summed up over the weekend by Geraint Thomas riding his heart out over the Izoard in a vain attempt to help Mikel Nieve win the stage to Risoul on Saturday, and on Sunday’s flat stage to Nîmes by the image of Porte being shelled out of the back of the peloton, and desperately attempting to regain contact without the help of a single team-mate. At the finish in Nîmes, Bernhard Eisel could be seen mixing it with the sprinters. It was a mirror image of Sky’s Giro d’Italia, where Ben Swift’s valiant efforts to win a stage were thwarted by crashes, and where Philip Deignan came close in the mountains, but just could not win.

“We just said that’s life, and that’s sport, and we decided that we’d just get on with it,” said Thomas after Saturday’s stage. “You can either be all depressed and ride around at the back of the peloton and do nothing for a week, or you can get stuck in and race hard. It feels like I’ve done a hell of a lot of work these past couple of weeks, and it all kind of fell apart [on Friday]. But that’s not anyone’s fault; that’s just the way it goes.”

But as the Giro had shown, for Sky to switch instantly from racing for the overall standings to hunting stages was not as simple a transition as it might appear. Plus, only seven of the 22 teams had won a stage in the first 15 days of racing; with six days to go, 14 other teams would be looking for a stage win, and the contest – as always at this stage of the Tour – is getting increasingly desperate.

Sky’s return this season is looking spectacularly low for a team which ended 2013 a narrow second in the world rankings. To date, in terms of major events, they have won the Omloop Het Nieuwsblad with Ian Stannard, the Tour of California with Wiggins, and the Tour de Romandie with Froome, although that win drew criticism after the revelation that he had been using a banned corticosteroid under prescription to treat a chest problem following an infection. Peter Kennaugh’s fine win in the Tour of Austria in the same week that Froome quit the Tour simply underlined that the national champion probably should have started the Tour, a selection decision which had left him angry and frustrated.

What with a doping positive and ban for Jonathan Tiernan-Locke, weeks of speculation about whether Wiggins should be selected for the Tour de France alongside Froome, and unfortunately timed injuries that have sidelined key members such as Stannard, 2014 has turned into a nightmare season for Sky.

“Now we have to recalibrate again,” said Brailsford. “You’ve got to take account of the situation and not get too downbeat. There’s a lot of racing to go. We have to try to animate the race as much as we can and go from there.”

Brailsford’s conclusion was the same as in 2010: you learn more from failure than from success. Unfortunately, Team Sky have plenty to analyse so far this year.