The flattest course so far in the 2015 Vuelta a España brought a fast group sprint and some general re-shuffling at the top of the leader board after stage 5. Team Katusha’s Daniel Moreno and Joaquim Rodriguez were attentive to the changes and came in with the early finishers with Dani taking 8th place on the day.

"We knew this stage would normally finish with a massive sprint so we did not expect to fight for the stage victory and only looked for good position at the end. The team did a good job, keeping Joaquim Rodriguez and Dani Moreno in the front and at the end both of them stayed with the front groups of rider. The uphill sprint was fast. Moreno took 8th on the stage which is a good result for such a profile. Rodriguez lost a few seconds but was also there at the end. The climb was quite hard and generated some time differences. Tomorrow we’re back in the mountains," said team director José Azevedo.

Coming up the left side of the course, 21-year old Australian Caleb Ewan (Orica-GreenEdge) took the biggest win of his young career, beating more experienced John Degenkolb and Peter Sagan in his first grand tour. The winning time was 3:57.28 on the 167,3 km stage from Rota to Alcalá de Guadaíra.

Gaps opened up on the slight uphill finish and time differences created put up a new race leader. For the general classification Tom Dumoulin (Team Giant-Alpecin) now wears the red leader’s jersey, hold 1-second to former leader Esteban Chaves of Orica-GreenEdge. Third place is still held by Nicolas Roche (Team Sky) at 15-seconds, with Katusha’s Daniel Moreno in 6th at 31-seconds and teammate Joaquim Rodriguez in 8th at thirty-six seconds.

A daylong break of three riders held 7 minutes but were finally brought back near 9 km to go, setting up a mass sprint. Sagan’s Tinkoff-Saxo team took over at the front, but Caleb Ewan outsmarted them all to take his 11th victory of the season.

Thursday racing continues on with stage 6. It’s another long stage in the 70th Vuelta a España at 200,3km, beginning in Cordoba and ending atop the Sierra de Cazorla.