Chris Sutton claimed third place in Karak as stage six at the Tour de Langkawi came down to another bunch sprint.

The Team Sky rider picked up his best result of the race in Malaysia after the short 96.6-kilometre blast for the fast men.

Race leader Caleb Ewan (Orica-GreenEdge) picked up the win on the day, extending his advantage in the yellow jersey out to 27 seconds in the process.

Astana and Orica-GreenEdge both committed to ensuring the stage finished in another bunch sprint, with the day’s four-man break given barely a minute’s advantage to play with.

Team Sky were among the teams looking ahead to Saturday’s big general classification showdown. Sebastian Henao, Ian Boswell, Philip Deignan and Danny Pate are all well placed, 36 seconds back – with the queen stage and the climb of Fraser’s Hill set to decide the overall victory.

Sports Director Gabriel Rasch talked TeamSky.com through the day and set the scene as attention now turns to Saturday’s showdown.

“CJ was happy to be up there in the sprint and he’s getting better with each stage,” said the Norwegian.

“Yesterday was a pretty hard stage and we knew GreenEdge and Astana wouldn’t work. They had almost a rest day but today they both controlled the whole stage. A break went straight away and they rode the whole day to make it a sprint.

“It’s going to be a hard stage tomorrow – but the harder it is the better from our point of view.

“Sebastian is the leader. He’s feeling strong so we’re going to go all in for him. That said we have four guys all on the same time so we’ll have to see what is happening. There might be some cards we can play.”