The 2011 season for the cycling team began in January at La Tropicale Amissa Bongo and ended in October at the Chrono des Nations. The season was their first as a UCI Professional Continental team, having been denied UCI ProTeam status for 2011 in the preceding offseason, due to a paperwork error. Thus, the team had to be selected by organizers of UCI World Tour events, including each of the season's Grand Tours, if they were to compete. Only the Tour de France extended a wildcard invitation to FDJ.
While the team was not particularly competitive in the World Tour level races to which they received invites, they dominated the UCI Europe Tour. As their Professional Continental status meant they were scored for Europe Tour performances, they handily won the Europe Tour teams competition, finishing with more than a thousand more points than second-placed . Of the team's 28 victories, all but two were in Europe Tour races. Jérémy Roy won the overall combativity award at the Tour de France, the team's most notable performance in a World Tour race on the year. The team had no one star rider in 2011, as seven different riders won multiple races.
2011 roster Ages as of January 1, 2011.
Riders who joined the team for the 2011 season Rider2010 teamWilliam BonnetNacer Bouhannistagiaire ()Steve ChainelArnaud Courteilleneo-proMickaël DelagePierrick FédrigoArnold JeannessonRémi PauriolCédric PineauDominique RollinGeoffrey Soupeneo-pro
Riders who left the team during or after the 2010 season Rider2011 teamPierre CazauxSébastien ChavanelMikaël CherelRémy Di GregorioTimothy GudsellTeam PureBlack RacingChristophe Le MévelJussi Veikkanen
One-day races Before the spring season and the races known as classics, Roy won the first race of the season held in France, the Grand Prix d'Ouverture La Marseillaise. He was part of the morning breakaway with two others, and rode away from them to victory after starting his solo move with left to race. In the first large group on the road, which finished 2'43" down on Roy, FDJ had Vichot in fifth and Pineau in eighth, giving them three of the top ten riders on the day.
Spring classics Vichot won Les Boucles du Sud Ardèche, taking place on the traditional opening weekend for the spring classics, at the front of a 12-rider sprint finish. On the same weekend, Offredo finished fourth at Omloop Het Nieuwsblad, and Hutarovich finished second to rider Christopher Sutton in Kuurne–Brussels–Kuurne; falling short by around a bike length, while Ladagnous featured in the main breakaways of both races. In March, Hutarovich finished fifth in Le Samyn, nine seconds down on race-winner, Dominic Klemme of . Chainel finished sixth in the Grand Prix de la Ville de Lillers, before Meersman placed second in Paris–Troyes, losing out to rider Jonathan Hivert in a four-man sprint to the line. Chainel and Bouhanni also placed in the top ten, finishing fifth and eighth respectively. After another breakaway in which Ladagnous was involved in, Hutarovich finished fifth in a mass sprint at the conclusion of Nokere Koerse. At Classic Loire Atlantique in France, after creating a four-man breakaway with Lieuwe Westra of , 's Jean-Marc Marino and rider Frédéric Amorison, they were joined by five other riders within the last , and Geslin ultimately could not hold onto the leaders' pace, and eventually finished sixth, 22 seconds down.
The team showed strongly at the first monument race of the season, Milan–San Remo. Chainel and Offredo were two of the 44 riders in the leading group on the road after a crash on the Le Manie climb from the finish effectively split the race in to. Both of them attacked and got free on the Cipressa, the course's penultimate climb, drawing Stuart O'Grady and Greg Van Avermaet with them. Chainel drove the group, sacrificing himself for Offredo. Vincenzo Nibali caught and surpassed them on the Poggio, the last climb on the course, but Offredo stayed with the group chasing Nibali, driven by world time trial champion Fabian Cancellara, and finished at the front of the race. He, Nibali, and Philippe Gilbert opened up the sprint for victory, made somewhat unusual by the fact that it was contested by eight riders representing eight different teams. Most of the leading group passed up Offredo, but he finished with a strong seventh place on the day. Madiot was impressed by Offredo's ride, his second attacking performance in Milan–San Remo in as many participations, and stated that he believed Offredo had a strong future as a classics rider ahead of him. While seventh place would have awarded 30 UCI World Tour points, Offredo's performance was not scored due to FDJ's relegation to Professional Continental status in the offseason. It had no bearing on the number of riders France were afforded at the world championships, unlike the nations of the other top performers in the race.
Three days later, Rollin finished tenth in Dwars door Vlaanderen. Bonnet finished sixth in the succeeding E3 Prijs Vlaanderen – Harelbeke three days later, after making his way into the breakaway, with Chainel also making it into a secondary breakaway from the main field after pressure from the squad. He eventually finished the race 15th. At the beginning of April, Meersman earned his second runner-up placing in the space of three weeks, finishing behind Renaud Dion () in Route Adélie; Meersman had been one of seven riders in contention for victory in a breakaway in the closing stages. Meersman followed up that performance two days later, in the inaugural Flèche d'Emeraude, by finishing fourth in the final mass sprint. Hutarovich finished third in the Scheldeprijs three days later, having avoided a crash in the finishing straight which eliminated several riders from contention for the top placings. Casar won Paris–Camembert later in April, by making a late ten-rider selection which included teammate Fédrigo, who worked to set Casar up for a sprint on the uphill finish. Casar was easily the strongest, ahead of Romain Hardy and Julien Antomarchi.
The following day, Geslin finished third in Brabantse Pijl, having been a part of a seven-man lead group, before 's Philippe Gilbert and rider Björn Leukemans attacked off the front and stayed away until the end. Meersman also finished within the top ten – in eighth place – after a counter-attack from the main field. Bouhanni finished eighth at the Grand Prix de Denain, before Casar finished third in the next day's Tour du Finistère, after 's Romain Feillu gapped the field in an uphill sprint to the line. Jeannesson and Chainel were part of a quartet of riders that were in the running for victory in Tro-Bro Léon, but both riders faded in the closing stages, and eventually finished third and fourth, 20 seconds down on race-winner Vincent Jérôme of . In May, Fédrigo finished second, behind rider Sylvain Georges, in the Grand Prix de Plumelec-Morbihan, while Pauriol finished tenth in the next day's Boucles de l'Aulne. Meersman completed the team's first-half single-day schedule, with third place in Halle–Ingooigem.
The team also sent squads to the Trofeo Laigueglia, Cholet-Pays de Loire, Gent–Wevelgem, the GP Miguel Induráin, the Tour of Flanders, Paris–Roubaix, La Flèche Wallonne and Liège–Bastogne–Liège, but placed no higher than 11th in any of these races.
Fall races
The second half of the 2011 season for FDJ began with La Ronde Pévèloise, held concurrently with the Tour de France, in which the team also competed in. Hutarovich finished second to Arnaud Démare – who joined the squad in August as a stagiaire – in a sprint finish, with Soupe also finishing in fifth place. The following week, Ladagnous placed second in the Grand Prix José Dubois, just behind rider Sébastien Delfosse. Courteille finished fifth in the race, 13 seconds behind Delfosse. In late July, the team took two of the top eight placings at the Polynormande, with Gérard in third and Ladagnous in eighth. Gérard had been part of a breakaway, and Ladagnous third from the peloton just over four and a half minutes behind race-winner Anthony Delaplace (). Pinot earned another third place for the team in August's Tre Valli Varesine; he accelerated clear of 's Enrico Gasparotto, who had tried to break the peloton and chase after Davide Rebellin () and Domenico Pozzovivo of , after they broke clear with under remaining.
The squad's fourth one-day win of the season came two days later, in the final race of Trittico Lombardo, at the Coppa Bernocchi. Hutarovich was one of a select group of sprinters to maintain a position within the main field in the prospect of a potential sprint finish, in which he would be one of the favourites for. With support from Casar, Jeannesson and Vaugrenard, Hutarovich was led towards the front of the main field just before the race entered its closing stages. A late-race crash reduced the number of riders in contention, and left Hutarovich, rider Manuel Belletti, Giovanni Visconti of and duo Kristijan Koren and Maciej Paterski clear of the field. Hutarovich out-sprinted his rivals to take the team's first victory in Italy, since Bradley McGee won the prologue stage of the 2004 Giro d'Italia in Genoa. Three days later, Hutarovich finished second to Anthony Ravard of at the Châteauroux Classic in a large field sprint.
The team earned another respectable result on the World Tour stage, at the following weekend's GP Ouest-France in Plouay. Gérard finished in sixth place, while Offredo also managed to finish in the top ten, in tenth place. Vichot took his second French Road Cycling Cup victory of the season, in September's Tour du Doubs, taking a solo victory by 16 seconds over the main field. Ladagnous and Geslin also finished well for the team, placing fourth and fifth respectively. The victory also allowed the squad to take the lead in the teams points standings; a lead that the team would not lose. The same day, stagiaire Schmidt finished inside the top ten of the Grote Prijs Jef Scherens. Soupe made it into the breakaway of the Memorial Rik Van Steenbergen event, but it failed to survive until the end of the race, falling some shy of the finish. Hutarovich contended in the sprint, but could finish no higher than sixth place.
Hutarovich later finished second in Paris–Brussels behind 's Denis Galimzyanov, before a sixth place the day after, in the Grand Prix de Fourmies. On the same day as the Grand Prix de Fourmies, the squad recorded their best result in a World Tour single-day race, at the Grand Prix Cycliste de Montréal in Canada. Geslin was part of a four-man move that established a lead of almost five minutes on the road, after . The breakaway did not materialise until the end; instead the quartet were caught on the fifteenth of the race's seventeen laps. From the descent of Mont Royal on the final lap, Fédrigo attacked along with rider Rui Costa and Stefan Denifl of and the trio managed to break clear of the field, holding a lead of over fifteen seconds within the closing stages. Denifl faded with left, and Costa out-sprinted Fédrigo to take victory on the line. Four seconds behind, Vichot finished in eighth place in a sprint of over 20 riders. Another victory occurred in the middle of September with Roux taking the honours in the Tour de la Somme, prior to leaving for the UCI Road World Championships in Denmark. Bouhanni finished fifth, after being helped towards the front by Roux, before he attacked in the closing stages of the race. The same day, Hutarovich earned another top-five placing, by finishing fifth in the Kampioenschap van Vlaanderen.