"There are two kinds of crashes - like what I did at Roubaix and Amstel, and like what Nibali did at Liege. One you stop the race and go home, the other you stop for a second and chase back to the peloton for 10 minutes."

Those were the words of Astana's Lieuwe Westra after stage one at the Tour de Romandie. Westra and his seven teammates, including Vincenzo Nibali, finished the hilly and cold team time trial - with zero crashes - 17 seconds behind Team Sky of Great Britain to start a week of World Tour racing in the green mountains of French-speaking Switzerland.

Westra crashed twice this season, leaving both Paris-Roubaix and Amstel Gold Race early with injuries. Nibali came to a sudden stop behind a group crash on Sunday at Liege-Bastogne-Liege, and then spent valuable energy rejoining the group.

Westra recovered fully and is back on track to race in support of Nibali this week at Romandie and in July at the Tour de France.

"As far as I know, we were to slow in the last five kilometres," his teammate Jakob Fuglsang told TV2 Sport "We lost a lot of time there. We were probably afraid to go full gas because of the small climb in the finale.

"We didn't win so we could have done better but I think we did pretty well.

"Those 17 seconds are unlikely to decide the race in the end. At least I don't hope they well. I think we are still in contention."