"Hopefully I can put myself in the lead" - Juan Ayuso looks to strike at queen stage and head towards overall victory

Juan Ayuso faces the queen stage of the Tirreno Adriatico in a favourable position to race on and win the overall classification, but without the weight of carring the race throughout the day. He is 22 seconds behind Filippo Ganna and has Antonio Tiberi, Derek Gee, Pello Bilbao, Jai Hindley, Mikel Landa, Adam Yates, Richard Carapaz and company behind him. He is the top favorite to take the lead and that is his goal.

He acknowledged in the Eurosport microphones that today on stage 6 to Frontignano is the key stage for the overall and that he is clear about what he wants to achieve: "The day that at the beginning of the week was D-Day, the one we were always waiting for, but because the weather has been so bad every day has been much harder than expected, today is the day where the differences can be made, hopefully I can put myself in the lead."

Ayuso has been very active on both hilly stages, countering multiple attacks and showing strong form to back up his second place in the overall classification. Despite doing a strong race thus far, Ganna is not expected to resist today's summit finish with the very best, which would put Ayuso in the virtual blue jersey ahead of tomorrow's finale in San Benedetto del Tronto.

He was asked if it would be enough to defend himself and if he would also want to win the stage. The UAE Team Emirates rider made it clear that Filippo Ganna is still ahead of him and that it won't be easy to take the leader's jersey from him: "Yes, well, but we also have to let Ganna go and seeing how he's going we'll have to set a strong pace because if he's not going to hang in there."