Chris Froome (Sky) was never under pressure in today's queen stage of the Criterium du Dauphiné and safely finished with his main rivals 16 seconds behind stage winner Samuel Sanchez (Euskaltel). With his nearest challenger being teammate Richie Porte, he feels that the team is in a very good position prior to tomorrow's summit finish in Risoul.

Chris Froome appeared to have everything under control throughout another testing day of racing in the Criterium du Dauphiné when he safely negotiated the race's queen stage to defend his overall lead. Without panicking despite attacks from riders like Alejandro Valverde (Movistar), Samuel Sanchez and Jakob Fuglsang (Astana), he let the Saxo-Tinkoff team reel most all but the latter two back in and he finished safely in the same time as all of his major rivals.

“Today was another hard day on the bike – a lot of climbing and naturally with that amount of climbing it was going to be a hard race to control," he confirmed.

Indeed, it was an uncontrollable race as no less than 22 riders escaped early in the stage. With 17th placed Kevin Seeldraeyers (Astana) being only 3.30 behind Froome, the Sky team was forced to chase hard throughout most of the day. Edvald Boasson Hagen and Ian Stannard did an amazing job to neutralize the attack on the lower slopes of the day's penultimate climb where it was time for Geraint Thomas and Vasil Kiryienka to set a tempo that discouraged most attacks until Saxp-Tinkoff finally took over.

Froome never hit the wind during the stage and he was once again quick to praise his team's efforts.

"I’m really happy with the work that my team-mates did," he said. "Again they stepped up and helped me to defend the yellow jersey. In the final Saxo Bank took up the pace on the penultimate climb, I think with a view to securing third position."

Teammate Richie Porte sneaked away towards the end to reduce his deficit by second and he is now 51 seconds behind Froome as his nearest challenger. Hence, the team is in a familiar situation, having seen a 1-2 in both last year's Dauphiné and Tour de France, and Froome expects that something similar could happen again in the world's biggest race.

"We have the two first places on GC," he said. "We can be in a very similar situation at the Tour de France too, so it’s a good exercise. It won’t be the same race though. There’ll be different teams with different objectives, like Saxo-Tinkoff was racing for third place on GC today."

Today's stage was highly anticipated as it included the double climb of Alpe d'Huez and Col de Sarenne and the subsequent descent which will be a key part of the 18th stage of the Tour. That feature had been a crucial point in attracting many of the Tour stars to the race and Froome was happy to have raced the difficult challenges at racing pace.

"To have climbed l’Alpe d’Huez once was hard enough, so I can imagine what it’ll be like when we’ll do it twice on the same day at the Tour," he said. "Today was definitely a rehearsal. The downhill of col de Sarenne is tricky. It’s good to have done it."

The race finishes tomorrow with another tough summit finish in Risoul but with a solid 1.37 gap over his nearest non-teammate Michael Rogers (Saxo-Tinkoff), Froome is confident that he will finish off the work.

“I wouldn’t say the race is over yet," he said. "Tomorrow is still going to be a really hard climb to Risoul. If you have a bad day in the mountains you can still lose minutes. It’s still all to race for but I’m feeling confident – especially with Richie Porte in second place. It puts Team Sky in a really strong position."

Starting at 12.45, you can follow the final stage on CyclingQuotes.com/live.