Having already finished fourth in the queen stage, BMC stagiaire Dylan Teuns did another impressive performance when he finished third in today's hilly stage. The Belgian is now third overall in a race loaded with WorldTour stars.

Dylan Teuns of the BMC Racing Team continued his climb up the overall standings Wednesday at the Friends Life Tour of Britain while teammate Sebastian Lander took the lead in the sprints classification. Teuns finished third and teammate Rick Zabel was eighth as a small group contested the stage at the end of the 184.6-kilometer race after Lander and teammate Peter Velits had been part of the day's nine-man breakaway.

Michal Kwiatkowski (Omega Pharma-Quick Step) took the win and the overall lead from Stage 3 winner Edoardo Zardini (Bardiani-CSF), who dropped to second overall, three seconds behind. Teuns, who has been riding as a stagiaire with the BMC Racing Team after starring for the BMC Development Team, moved from fourth to third overall and is 11 seconds off the lead.

"I was not so fresh like yesterday, but I felt pretty good," Teuns said. "I felt the effort from yesterday but I also felt I was good on the climbs again today."

Teuns followed an attack by Kwiatkowski with two kilometers to go.

"We closed the gap to Nicholas Roche (Tinkoff-Saxo) but then Kwiatkowski did not want to ride and I did not want to ride," he said. "Then it became a sprint really early – at 300 meters – because it was a false flat from one kilometer to 300 meters and then a little bit up."

Teuns signed a multi-year contract last month with the BMC Racing Team, beginning in 2015, and has won stages at the Tour de l'Avenir, the Giro Ciclistico della Valle d'Aosta Mont Blanc and the Tour de Bretagne this year.

Lander, who was part of the breakaway for the second straight day, won the second and third sprints on the stage and was second in the first. That earned the former Danish national road champion a seven-point lead over Sonny Colbrelli (Bardiani-CSF) in the sprints classification.

"Yesterday I was a little bit disappointed that I did not take the first sprint because it was just in the corner so I was not able to get an acceleration for it," Lander said. "So I was a little bit annoyed about that and told myself I wanted to go in the breakaway again. Now that I have the jersey, it is my goal to keep it and defend it as well as possible."

Velits, the Slovakian national time trial champion, was one of the last three survivors from the day's breakaway.

"We knew the last important thing was the last climb before the finish, but we did not expect the bunch to be coming back so fast," he said. "We only had half a minute, so it was not a big advantage. Albert Timmer (Team Giant-Shimano) attacked with two-and-a-half kilometers to go and I tried to follow, but suddenly guys were coming from the peloton. It was not really perfect, but it was a good day to be in the break and good training for the world championship team time trial."