Vincenzo Nibali, who may have expected to lose time in Sunday’s TTT at the Giro d’Italia, says he is quietly content with his Astana team taking third behind Team Sky even though the squad isn’t exactly brimming with time trial specialists.

At the end of the day Nibali lost 14 seconds to the main rival Bradley Wiggins (Sky), a difference Nibali described as minimal.

“It’s not too bad as a team performance goes, we can be pretty happy,” Nibali told reporters afterwards according to Italian daily La Stampa. “We can be pretty happy all round, considering the squad is mainly made up of climbers.”

“The parcours was very hard, and we fought as a unit, I’m still feeling very positive about all of this. It’s the end of the race which counts, not how things look after stage two. We were very consistent, we didn’t have any bad patches even though it was such a technical course, and to lose by a very small margin like that is pretty satisfying. I can be happy with that.”