Tinkoff-Saxo finished fourth on the team time trial of Tour de France, where the squad had to concede 28 seconds to stage winner BMC. Team captain Alberto Contador is now 1’03” behind the GC lead but notes that much can change, when the race hits the mountains. 
 
After crossing the line in Plumelec, a poised Alberto Contador asserts that the team had raced well despite a time loss.
 
“I think we still did a good time. We will rest and then attack the mountain stages, anything can still happen. There are many stages at altitude and it’s a Tour, where consistency will be important. This can favor me. We'll wait and see how everyone is in the mountains. Everybody will have less good days, hopefully we won’t, and we will have to benefit from that. Regularity is very important and that encourages me”, says Alberto Contador and continues:
 
“On the first rest day of the Giro I was a bit more certain, as I knew the status of my body. Now, there is more uncertainty. What I've noticed in this first part of the Tour is that I lack the spark that others have. I hope that this spark will not have importance, when we look at the Tour as a whole. If I am good I'll try, because I believe that we must seize every opportunity, when it arises”

Tinkoff-Saxo rode the 28km team time trial in 32’43” – a result that Peter Sagan, who still holds the white and green jersey, sees as neither good nor bad.
 
“For me, today’s result was not as important, as it was for Alberto but I had hoped that we would have done a bit better. We lost 28 seconds, which is significant but not very bad. We have to look forward, tomorrow is the rest day and then we will start to focus on what we can do in the next part of Tour de France. For me the tempo was okay, we started out at full speed and kept the intensity high to the finish. For sure, this result is not a step in the right direction for the team’s and Alberto’s chances but the Tour is still long and we are all here to fight for the yellow jersey”, comments Peter Sagan before adding about the first part of his Tour de France:

"We've ridden flat out. We finish 28 seconds down. It's not fantastic but it's also not bad. I don't know in which part of the course we've lost time. For Alberto, the Tour de France is still a long way to go. We must continue to believe that he'll win and look for opportunities in the mountains.
 
“I’m happy for the rest day, but the rest day always feels very short. So we will use the time to recover and to plan how we can regain time. Overall I’m happy with the first nine days, it has been a very interesting Tour de France so far. I would have been happy for a stage win, but there are more chances later on in the race”.

Head sports director Steven de Jongh underlines that the team made a well-coordinated and consistent team effort but couldn’t have gone any faster.
 
“I had hoped that we would finish in the top three but overall I think the team was consistent. We simply didn’t have that high speed and we lost just below 1 second per kilometer. I think that, as a team, we did very well, we divided the work and the boys rode as we had planned - but we were just not fast enough. I don’t believe that we could have gone any faster, so I’m satisfied with the fact that everybody rode their best. Now, Alberto is 1’03” behind Froome, we still have much terrain, where we can try to turn the classification around and with the mountains coming up it will be up to Sky to control the race. I still think that Alberto can realize his goal and we will definitely be looking for opportunities”, concludes Steven de Jongh.