The BMC Racing Team's ninth place in Tuesday's team time trial was disappointing, Directeur Sportif John Lelangue said, but the 26 seconds lost is not a major cause for concern with so much of the race still to come.

Orica-GreenEDGE won the 25km race against the clock by one second over Omega Pharma-Quick Step and three seconds ahead of Sky Procycling. "We wanted to make a top five result and to lose a little less time on the big leaders for the general classification," Lelangue said.

"So it was a little bit of disappointment with all the work we have done. We know that this can happen on such a fast parcours, even if it is such a short distance. At least we are still there and we know it is a long way to go to Paris. The mountains are only coming at the end of the week and we have two more individual time trials: a really fast one around Mont Saint-Michel and a technical one in Embrun."

Cadel Evans, who is 28th overall, 26 seconds behind new race leader Simon Gerrans (Orica-GreenEdge), put it simply: "We weren't fast enough," he said. "Losing a lot of seconds isn't something you want to hope for today and it isn't what I expected," he said, "but we'll have to go back over the analysis and have a look why."