The Victorian crossed in 78th position behind a mass of pin-balling sprinters to remain only 17secs behind race leader Fabian Cancellara and 10secs down on arch-rival Bradley Wiggins.

Evans said BMC teammates including Marcus Burghardt and George Hincapie had expertly kept him out of trouble in "this sometimes disrespectful nervous peloton."

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But potentially the much bigger development for Evans on Tuesday was that Sky rider Kanstantin Sivtsov became the first rider to abandon the race.

The Belarusian, a key lieutenant for Evans' main rival Brad Wiggins, crashed at 140km into the 197km stage from Orchies to the northern coastal town of Boulogne-sur-Mer.

It means Wiggins is now one rider down for support when he duels with Evans in the mountains."You need to be firing on all cylinders in this race and to be one man down, it's not an advantage, that's for sure," Evans said.

"I've been many guys down on certain occasions.

"Nine is better than eight."

Evans benefited again from strong BMC teamwork to stay out of trouble............

.......But neither man is prepared to budge from pre-race theories that the 99th Tour would go down to the wire in Paris.

Asked if the battle for yellow was over only 10 days into the race, Wiggins said: "No, it's never over until the fat lady sings and she hasn't entered the building yet.

"This race is far from over. Cadel is an absolute fighter and I'm taking it one day at a time and not get carried away with the emotions.

"This race is not over until Paris.
"I'm only human, I'm not a machine.

"Things can still got wrong. Anything can happen. I could have a bad day, a crash.


"We'll put this day behind and be ready to go in two days time."

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Evans has vowed to fight all the way to the French capital on Sunday week, hopeful of making up time in the French Alps and the Pyrenees.

"You see where we are and it is what it was," Evans said.

"I rode not my best time trial, but certainly not a bad one which, in comparison to the other time triallers in Cancellara and Martin and so on, it wasn't so far off the mark."

Asked how he would approach the remaining 11 stages of the Tour, Evans said: "Same as always - fight to the end and don't give up."That continues and it hasn't been optimal so far, the Tour, 1.50 down or something.

"Not the best position to be in compared to last year, being two seconds down was a lot more realistic.

"Reassess the situation day by day.

"We don't give up, we don't give up - that's for sure.

"There's a lot more racing to go before Paris."

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