Former Team Sky rider and 2012 Tour de France champion Bradley Wiggins showed a silver lining for his former team on stage 6 as Ineos Grenadier controlled the pace of the peloton on the final two climbs of the race.

This season's defending champions rode into the Tour from behind, showing occasional weakness after recent dominant performances by Jumbo Visma and its leader Primoš Roglic. Last year's Tour winner, Egan Bernal, is still suffering from the back pain that caused him to abandon the Criterium du Dauphiné and lost a valuable time bonus when Roglic won stage 4, but the 23-year-old Bernal is in fifth place overall.

On stage 6, he reportedly yelled at mountain domestique Michał Kwiatkowski when the former world champion began to pick up the pace with a few kilometers remaining.

"It was a Dave Brailsford-like race. In the first few days, he was clearly different from the Ineos that we have become accustomed to in the last few years, running at the front and having a presence," Wiggins commented bullishly on Eurosport's "Breakaway."

"Today they were right there from the first kilometer, Jumbo Visma was very happy for them to run there and they stuck behind. Ineos today was a statement of intent not to be bullied by the other teams.

Ineos' rivals were sitting on their wheels when the British team took control of the race.

Roglic admitted that Ineos set a hard tempo, but with few opportunities to attack on the final climb, the 2019 Vuelta a España winner was going to resist any chance to put pressure on Bernal.

"Ineos ran a really hard tempo. It was fine for us and for the rest of the field. It wasn't completely flat and there was a hill at the end. The breakaway was very strong. It was another good day for us.

A truce in the battle for the yellow jersey meant that Adam Yates had a relatively trouble-free day. Yates turned down a contract extension with Mitchelton Scott and will move to Ineos next year. Wiggins believes that Brailsford has enough in him to determine that the 28-year-old Yates, who has finished fourth in the past and won the white jersey, can win a Grand Tour in the future.

"Dave Brailsford will look at him and think he has already proven he is capable of winning the Tour de France. He is a great rider and many riders who grew up with him and Simon in the academy say that Adam is the better of the two. He is a phenomenal talent and we keep saying he is a talent. He may not win the Tour de France, but he will certainly win the Giro and the Vuelta.