Team Ineos pipped to first place in Tour de France time trials

"Looking at GC, it's a good performance, but obviously we wanted to win," Thomas said. "I think 20 seconds (to Jumbo-Visma) is a big enough gap to know a few mistakes didn't cost us the stage win. It was a positive day for sure."

The Welshman added that he had felt no ill-effects from his late tumble on stage one.

"I have no injury issues," he said. "I was going pretty slow when I hit the barriers yesterday – I'm absolutely fine."

Though Gianni Moscon – a rider who was almost sacked by then Team Sky 12 months ago when he was disqualified from the Tour for punching Elie Gesbert on stage 15 – was denied the yellow jersey, Thomas and Bernal will welcome the sight of some significant time gaps.

Home hope Romain Bardet suffered the biggest loss as his AG2R La Mondiale squad conceded 59 seconds to the Ineos duo, while Richie Porte's Trek-Segafredo gave up 58 seconds and Nairo Quintana's Movistar lost 45.

Dan Martin's UAE Team Emirates squad lost 43 seconds on Ineos but – given their lack of pedigree in the discipline – the Irishman was not too disappointed.

"Because we're all on different race programmes, it's difficult to find the time to work together and it's the first time we've done a team time trial in race conditions together," he said.

"I think we did a good performance. We just wanted to stay conservative, didn't want to take risks and I think we did that. We got the maximum out of ourselves and we have to be happy."

Others suffered less damage but still find themselves down the general classification standings.

Groupama-FDJ's Thibaut Pinot lost 12 seconds on the Ineos duo and Bahrain-Merida's Vincenzo Nibali conceded 16.

Jakob Fuglsang, who suffered a knee injury in a late crash on Saturday, kept his losses to 21 seconds against Ineos as he battled to help his Astana team, and it was the same deficit for Adam Yates and Mitchelton-Scott.

Simon Yates, here to help Adam in the mountains, was dropped by his team-mates with around 11km to go but that did not hamper the squad too much.

"We had a good ride," Adam said. "It was pretty tough out there.

"In the beginning I sat on a little bit to make sure I could get to the finish. We have some strong guys in the team who were putting in some very big turns."

Long before Jumbo-Visma rolled off the ramp, the first team to seriously threaten Ineos' mark was Katusha-Alpecin, powered along by Britain's time-trial champion Alex Dowsett.

They slipped to fifth overall by the end of the afternoon, 26 seconds down on Jumbo-Visma, but Dowsett said the performance left him "buzzing".

"If I said to you that I could have won it if I have done the right thing, I would have won every race," the Essex rider said.

"That was one of the most perfect team time trials I have been part of.

"That was good from us. Sometimes when you are part of a good team time trial you come back buzzing whatever the result is."

ga('create', 'UA-72310761-1', 'auto', {'name': 'pacontentapi'});
ga('pacontentapi.set', 'referrer', location.origin);
ga('pacontentapi.set', 'dimension1', 'By Ian Parker, PA, Brussels');
ga('pacontentapi.set', 'dimension2', '23fddbcc-71fa-4291-9316-b89ba8844846');
ga('pacontentapi.set', 'dimension3', 'paservice:sport,paservice:sport:uk,paservice:sport:world');
ga('pacontentapi.set', 'dimension6', 'story');
ga('pacontentapi.set', 'dimension7', 'composite');
ga('pacontentapi.set', 'dimension8', null);
ga('pacontentapi.set', 'dimension9', 'sport:cycling,sport:other');
ga('pacontentapi.send', 'pageview', { 'location': location.href, 'page': (location.pathname + location.search + location.hash), 'title': 'Team Ineos denied another Tour team time trial triumph as they clinch second'});