Nicolas Roche held on to fourth place overall with a top-10 finish on stage seven at the Vuelta a Espana while Chris Froome slipped back.

The first significant summit finish of the Spanish Grand Tour produced an intriguing finish and a race within a race as the breakaway held on for victory.

Team Sky again had numbers to the fore on the tricky 18-kilometre Alto de Capileira climb, yet as the pace increased Froome lost touch with the lead pack shortly before the flamme rouge.

Setting his own tempo, the Brit crossed the line 34 seconds back on rival Fabio Aru (Astana), who attacked in the closing stages to take third into La Alpujarra.

Roche crossed the line 10th, allowing him to secure fourth place overall following the opening week of racing, 36 seconds back on the red jersey. Mikel Nieve was also present among the lead finishers, with the Basque rider now sitting 11th on GC, with Froome one place further back. The pair are 1:21 and 1:22 respectively behind overall leader Esteban Chaves (Orica-GreenEdge).

Team Sky extended their lead in the team classification out to almost four minutes on the day, with Sergio Henao backing up the consistency in 17th overall.

"Today, the weather was very dry and not everybody likes it," Roche said. "I like it alright. I didn't do too badly in the finale. I was always at my limits but I didn't try to attack, I above all tried not to lose time.

"I think that with Chris, one should not worry. Not yet. He came directly from the Tour willing to go crescendo. If he lost a few  seconds today, it's not alarming.

“I’m not alarmed. I think tonight he’ll be a bit grumpy and it’s only normal but he knows how to ride and he knows himself very well. We’ve seen him many times have a bad day but not lose too much time and take it day by day and recover. This is the first one and there are many, many, many more to come, and harder stages too, so if he lost 10, 20 or 30 seconds today it’s not the end of the world.

“We didn’t get any instruction at that stage. Mikel and I were trying to fight on the front there and we stayed focused all the way to the end. Froomey knows how to ride his own pace. Sometimes, with the way he rides by keeping his pace and then suddenly completely accelerating in his high cadence mode in the last kilometre, it’s better not to have someone wait with him.

“I think Froomey did a good tactic not to call Mikel or me down to him and just ride his own pace. If it was 5 or 6k to go maybe it would have been a different tactic but I think he did his own thing and there’s no alarm yet.

“I think there’s two ways of seeing it. There’s arriving pretty strong and hoping that it holds, or arriving a bit underneath and hoping that it comes back. I think Froomey’s definitely arrived building up and I’m pretty sure that over the next few days, when we hit the hard stages of the coming week, he’ll be there.”