Daniel Moreno proved that he is reaching his usual good late-season condition when he finished second behind Nairo Quintana in the Vuelta a Burgos queen stage. The Katusha leader was pleased with his performance as he could almost keep up with the Giro champion.

The 170 km stage from Comunero de Revenga to Lagunas de Neila provided the battle ground for the queen stage of climbing on Friday in the Vuelta a Burgos. Team Katusha’s Daniel Moreno was up for the fight, taking on Nairo Quintana of Movistar and just missing the win by six seconds.

"Today I was motivated to fight for the stage victory, but in the end I missed a few seconds. The team was perfect and I want to thank the guys for all the help and support. The final climb was very hard, especially considering that this is my first race since the Dauphiné. But I tried to show my best today. In the final kilometer when Quintana attacked, I could not follow him immediately but I tried to come back to him. In general I am happy with the result, but of course I wanted to win today," said Daniel Moreno.

Quintana’s attack came at a good moment with Moreno responding in a timely manner, but it was just a little too much for Dani who settled for second place after four-and-a-half hours of racing. Taking third place was Mikel Landa of Astana. Quintana leads on the general classification by only one second to Daniel Moreno with two stages still to race.

"Today we had one plan and that was to bring Dani Moreno to the final climb without any problems where he could fight for the stage win. The entire team did a strong race. When we passed the final climb for the first time, Dmitriy Kozonchuk and Alberto Losada were still with Dani to support him. The last time up, there were a lot of attacks but every time Dani was in front, controlling Quintana. With 400 meters to go Quintana was able to get a small gap of just a few seconds, but it was enough for his victory. We were close today and this was one of our goals here. But we still have two stages to race and there is only one second between Quintana and Moreno so the race is still wide open," explained head sports director José Azevedo.

Tomorrow’s shorter stage 4 is 142 km starting from Medina de Pomar and features three rated climbs before a downhill finish in Villarcayo.