VALENCE, France — The air-conditioning on the bus of the Bretagne-Séché Environnement team died just as the Tour de France, which has been marked by hot weather, began. On Saturday, one of the team’s riders was thrown out of the Tour for taking a brief trip in a car. The chances of one of its riders winning the Tour are effectively zero, and the odds of a stage win are slim.

Yet the team could not be happier to be at the Tour for a second year.

“You have two ways to do pro cycling: You make the Tour or not,” said the team’s spokesman, Claude Droussent, who is a former editor of L’Equipe, a daily sports newspaper that, in an earlier incarnation, started the Tour as a way to build circulation.

Team Sky, which is based in Britain and includes the Tour leader, Chris Froome, had a budget last year of about $38.2 million. Droussent said Bretagne-Séché spends about a fifth of that. Sky has at least a dozen vehicles at the Tour, including a truck containing a kitchen and a dining room for its riders. Bretagne-Séché’s now-stuffy bus was once owned by another French team, Cofidis, and appears to have been repainted at a low-budget body shop.

And while Froome has won a stage and maintained a firm grip on the yellow jersey during Stage 15 on Sunday at the Tour, Bretagne-Séché’s four stage wins this season came at the Tropicale Amissa Bongo, in Gabon.