Tour des Alpes Maritimes et du Var: Tim Wellens wins queen stage and goes into the final day in pole position

Lotto Soudal have made it two wins in two days as they conquered the queen stage into La Turbie with a sprint by Tim Wellens. He now leads the Tour des Alpes Maritimes et du Var into the final hilly day as he caught up with Nairo Quintana in the final kilometers and posteriorly outsprinted the Colombian.

The breakaway that went early on was composed of Lilian Calmejane (AG2R Citroën Team) Jonas Rutsch (EF Education-EasyPost), Lewis Askey (Groupama - FDJ), Jonathan Couanon and Maxime Urruty (Nice Métropole Côte d'Azur). Lotto Soudal worked throughout the day to keep the gap small and managed to do so indeed, with the breakaway caught before the final climb which saw a reduced peloton go up the Col d'Éze.

The peloton hit the very tough slopes of the climb with AG2R pushing the pace and very early on Nairo Quintana attacked the group going solo. Guillaume Martin briefly jumped across the gap, but the Colombian was the strongest up the climb and built a solid gap into the summit. He was chased however by Tim Wellens who kept the gap stable at around 10 seconds with 6 kilometers to go and then in the favourable flat roads managed to reel Quintana in.

The duo worked together to the line but the fight was never balanced, as Wellens easily outsprinted Quintana to the line taking his second win of the season, and the second out of two for Lotto Soudal in the race.

Valentin Madouas sprinted to third place in the chasing group that came home in bits, 25 seconds behind.