BMC have lined up a young team at the Tour of Britain and their youngsters are all excelling. While stagiaire Dylan Teuns is in third overall, Rick Zabel sprinted to a top 10 result in today's stage and Sebastian Lander defended the sprints jersey.

BMC Racing Team's Rick Zabel finished sixth Thursday at the Friends Life Tour of Britain while teammate Dylan Teuns held onto his third place overall and Sebastian Lander kept his lead in the sprint classification. Zabel scored his third top 10 result of the race by finishing 14 seconds after Matthias Brändle (IAM Cycling) soloed to the stage win, eight seconds ahead of Shane Archbold (An Post-Chainreaction) and Maarten Wynants (Belkin Pro Cycling Team).

Teuns finished 20th and in the same time as Zabel to remain 14 seconds behind race leader Michal Kwiatkowski (Omega Pharma-Quick Step). Edoardo Zardini (Bardiani-CSF) is second, three seconds off the lead.

BMC Racing Team Sport Director Max Sciandri said Teuns is showing maturity beyond his status as a stagiaire.

"He is quite relaxed, which is good," Sciandri said. "We are breaking it down for him each day, telling him to take it one stage at a time – not to think about Sunday, not to think about tomorrow. I think he puts a lot of pressure on himself, but we are trying to take some of it off of him."

Because of the day's four-man breakaway up the road, Lander did not contest any of the three intermediate sprints during the 177.3-km stage. But he kept his seven-point lead in the sprints classification over Sonny Colbrelli (Bardiani-CSF), who was also not in the breakaway.