Lampre-Merida provided a surprisingly good performance in yesterday’s team time trial on stage 4 of the Tour de France, describing their own upset as “one of the best performances ever” to finish in eighth place. Defeating some teams that were believed to be more ideally suited for such a slat parcours, the Italian team lost just 25 seconds to Orica-GreenEDGE who won the stage.

The surprise outcome places team captain Damiano Cunego, who still entertains aspirations of a high overall finish in the Tour de France, in 25th place followed by teammates Przemyslaw Niemiec and Jose Serpa and well positioned against the rest of the challengers. Following the race against the clock yesterday Cunego trails Chris Froome (Sky) by 22 seconds and Alberto Contador (Saxo-Tinkoff) by 16 seconds.

"I'm very happy with today’s terrific performance,” explained Cunego after the stage. “We all were great. It was not so simple for us to keep a high speed on the flat course, but we did it in a perfect way, thanks to a very good team spirit.”

Cunego finished 6th overall in the Tour last year and is looking to improve on that achievement this year. Whether he will succeed will depend on what happens on the mountain stages though Cunego will definitely be pleased with the way things have turned out for him so far in the race.