Following on from Wednesday’s breakaway exploits where Team dsm-firmenich PostNL and Max Poole claimed third place on the stage, the team set out with the same goal of infiltrating the move and going for the stage win once again. This time the peloton would be faced with a rolling day in the saddle and a mountain-top finish at Estacion de Montaña de Manzaneda after 137 kilometres of racing.
Due to the short nature of the stage it was once again a fast start with lots of attacks, with the team rotating well to make sure they were always involved. Eventually, a strong and selective front group of ten escaped that included Poole and with no immediate GC threats their gap was allowed to balloon out to over ten minutes at one. It was clear that they would fight it out for the stage win but as they started the final climb the breakaway group was still together and things became tactical, as a flurry of attacks and moves followed.
When things regrouped once more, Castrillo would go on to make what would ultimately be the stage winning move as he built up a buffer of over 30 seconds on the second group, who all looked at each other to set the pace. Ineos, with two riders in the group, then began to set tempo and kept things steady before Poole attacked alongside Narvaez, as they quickly made it up to Schmid while Soler then joined them a few hundred metres later. Despite Poole trying to keep things going, the cooperation in the group wasn’t great and out front Castrillo kept riding a solid and steady tempo – around 30 seconds ahead. Inside the flamme rouge Poole used one of the steeper sections to create distance between himself and the rest of the group, setting off in pursuit of Castrillo but he would run out of road in the end, crossing the line for a valiant second place finish; just eight seconds in arrears of the stage winner.
