Lluis Mas continued his excellent grand tour debut when he again made the break in stage 6 and extended his lead in the mountains competition. The Spaniard is now considering his options of defending the lead in Sunday's big mountain stage too.

Riding his first year at the pro continental level, Lluis Mas has had a fantastic grand tour debut. Today the Spaniard was on the attack for the second day in the Vuelta a Espana and he managed to extend his lead in the KOM competition in the process.

"I felt pretty good even though it was hot," he said. "The truth is that I thought we could stay away but in the end they tightened the group. But I am happy.

"We knew it was hard but we had optiosn if we had 3 minutes at the bottom of the final climb. We did out best but the peloton caught us 3000m from the line and we failed. When I was caught, the peloton was already split and two riders have no chance against the bunch.

"I attacked before Piedra, Amets [Txurruka] and Aramendia and my attempt was the right one. But it cost a lot of energy to get clear. Once I was ahead, I tried to score points and it went well.

"When I was caught, I saw that Arroyo was in a goo position and also Amets and Piedra but certainly some did better. They are doing a great race. Arroyo always gets better so let's see what he can do on Sunday on a stage that suits him better.

"We will try to win a stage and at one point the circumstances may be in our favour. Bout looking at ur rivals, it will be difficult before the GC is a bit more settled.

“I was very excited today. It was very hard. After the second climb, we thought we had a possibility to arrive but the peloton didn’t agree with that.

"The polka dot jersey remains a big call for me. I’m thinking of defending it on Sunday but it’ll be difficult because there are a lot of hard climbs but who knows, if I manage to break away and take points in the early part of the stage, I might continue my adventure with this jersey. I love it.”