The BMC Racing Team overcame confusion and a bit of chaos before the start of Saturday's team time trial at the Tour of Austria to finish third in the prologue.

Katusha Team won the 5.4-kilometer race against the clock, one second ahead of MTN-Qhubeka. The BMC Racing Team was five seconds off the winning time after starting without past Slovakian national time trial and world team time trial champion rider Peter Velits, who was held up at the pre-race bike check.

"The saddle of Peter was 0.3 millimeters out of the level," BMC Racing Team Sport Director Valerio Piva said. "They usually do not check the road bikes before a race like this and they did not have a jig to measure the bikes. So the guys were a little bit stressed. Without this problem, I think we would have been fighting for the victory."

All 20 teams used standard road bikes due to the possibility of rain and for better safety, race officials said, as the course crossed several tram tracks.

BMC Racing Team's Brent Bookwalter said with only two minutes separating each of the 20 teams, there was even more nervousness before the start than usual. Less than 30 seconds before rolling down the start ramp, several of the team's riders were still getting into position.

"We did a good job of refocusing once we were out there," Bookwalter said. "But there was still some confusion of how many riders we had and it took a minute to re-position. I felt like we finished very strong. But in such a short race, it's hard to pull back any time once we a couple seconds back."

Joey Rosskopf was the BMC Racing Team's first rider across the finish line and earned the lead in the king of the mountains classification. Rüdiger Selig (Katusha Team) is first to wear the race leader's yellow jersey. The nine-day race continues Sunday with a 206.6-km race from Mörbisch to Scheibbs.