Sepp Kuss wins incredible stage 6 as Jumbo-Visma show dominance and Lenny Martinez moves into overall lead at the Vuelta a Espana

Atop the Pico del Buitre, Sepp Kuss took the breakaway stage win as Lenny Martinez moved into the Red Jersey and Remco Evenepoel lost time to his main rivals.

Stage 6 of the Vuelta a Espana is a day where the legs will only be tested on one climb so it will be hard to put Remco Evenepoel under pressure with numbers, however the summit finish at Javalambre will be very complicated and can set important differences.

After an hour-long, full gas battle to get into the breakaway, a mammoth group of 42 riders finally snapped the elastic. Contained in that supergroup were numerous big names and potential general classification challengers.

Best placed in the GC was Lenny Martinez, starting the day at 3rd just 17 seconds off the Red Jersey. Sepp Kuss, Marc Soler, Santiago Buitrago, Mikel Landa, Juan Pedro Lopez, Hugh Carthy, Romain Bardet and David de la Cruz were all also among the break. "This kind of situation has never happened before in the last 6 years, in one of the 3 big tours with so many well-classified riders in a break-away of this scale," commented Sporza analyst Jose De Cauwer on Belgian TV.

As is often the case with such large breakaway groups, the dynamics within aren't always the best. As such it wasn't long before things began to break up once again.

With 50km to go, the time gap had dropped to around five minutes with the now 39 riders in the lead group seemingly having come to the mutual understanding of letting the Jumbo-Visma riders do the majority of the work.

The peloton though had really upped the pace behind. Led by the Movistar Team and Soudal - Quick-Step, the advantage of the breakaway continued to drop.

At the intermediate sprint, it was Marc Soler who took the maximum bonus seconds on offer.

As the breakaway reached the bottom slopes of the final climb, their advantage over the peloton was at 3:43, meaning the stage win would more than likely come from the leading group.

Behind meanwhile, the Red Jersey group had thinned drastically as Soudal - Quick-Step maintained a high pace with only around 15 riders keeping contact.

The first to make a move from the break was Einer Rubio, launching an attack with just over 4km to go and immediately getting a gap. Romain Bardet and Lenny Martinez led the charge behind with Sepp Kuss quick to join the French duo.

In the Red Jersey group, Primoz Roglic then launched an attack with Evenepoel unable to answer.

Jumbo-Visma were dominant. As Roglic was joined by Jonas Vingegaard and Enric Mas, Kuss attacked clear into the lone lead of the stage and possibly the Red Jersey.

The stage win was the American's, high fiving fans as he reached the line. And the clock back to Martinez began.

A late burst from the young Frenchman secured him the overall race lead with Bardet in third.

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