Julian Alaphilippe (Quick-Step Floors) leads the Tour of Britain heading into the penultimate stage as the French rider finished second behind stage six winner Wout Poels (Team Sky) on Friday.
Alaphilippe finished two seconds behind Poels on the 168.3km ride from Barrow-in-Furness to Whinlatter Pass. Hugh Carthy of the EF Education First-Drapac team was 12 seconds behind Poels in third.
Poels and Alaphilippe pulled away on the final climb up Whinlatter.
With two stages remaining, Alaphilippe leads Poels by 17 seconds in the general classification.
“Second is really nice, it’s going to be a hard fight – no more uphill finishes, everything is flat. But we’ll keep on trying,” said Poels. “I’m really happy so it’s really nice that I could finish it off,” he said.
Primoz Roglic, the overnight leader, saw his chances of overall victory dented when he dropped to third place, a further 15 seconds back.
Alaphilippe becomes the fifth Tour of Britain leader in six days of racing after also winning stage three in Bristol.
“All of my guys did an incredible performance and everybody was riding for me today to protect me before the last climb,” Alaphilippe said.
“Roglic was on my wheel at the end and I tried to attack the last time to drop him. I’m really happy to take the (leader’s) green jersey.”
Saturday’s penultimate stage runs from West Bridgford to Mansfield before the climax to the race in London on Sunday.
Tour of Britain 2018 – stage 6 results (Barrow-in-Furness – Whinlatter Pass):
| 1 | Wout Poels (Team Sky) | 4:01:51 |
| 2 | Julian Alaphilippe (Quick-Step Floors) | +02” |
| 3 | Hugh Carthy (EF Education First-Drapac) | +12” |
| 4 | Jonathan Hivert (Direct Energie) | +21” |
| 5 | Patrick Bevin (BMC) | ,, |
| 6 | Tom Pidcock (Team Wiggins) | ,, |
| 7 | Xandro Meurisse (Bel) Wanty-Groupe Gobert) | ,, |
| 8 | Dion Smith (Wanty-Groupe Gobert) | ,, |
| 9 | Max Stedman (Canyon-Eisberg) | ,, |
| 10 | Jasha Sütterlin (Movistar) | ,, |
General classification after stage 6:
| 1 | Julian Alaphilippe (Quick-Step Floors) | 19:46:54 |
| 2 | Wout Poels (Team Sky) | +17” |
| 3 | Primoz Roglic (LottoNL-Jumbo) | +33” |
| 4 | Patrick Bevin (BMC) | +46” |
| 5 | Bob Jungels (Quick-Step Floors) | +51” |
| 6 | Jasha Sütterlin (Movistar) | +58” |
| 7 | Neilson Powless (LottoNL-Jumbo) | +01’10” |
| 8 | Dmitry Strakhov (Katusha-Alpecin) | +01’24” |
| 9 | Christopher Hamilton (Team Sunweb) | +01’28” |
| 10 | Pascal Eenkhoorn (LottoNL-Jumbo) | +01’35” |
