Two-time UCI World TTT Champion Omega Pharma - Quick-Step Cycling Team powered to victory by an impressive 11" seconds on the flat, 18.5km parcours of the Tirreno-Adriatico team time trial on Wednesday. This is the second straight year the team has won the team time trial stage.

Mark Cavendish took over on the front after Tony Martin in the final meters, helping to drag the team along the line as they beat ORICA-GreenEDGE and their previous best time of 20'24" (54.411km/h average speed) with an average speed of 54.905 kilometers per hour. Movistar was 3rd, 18" back.

As a result of the win, Cavendish put on the Maglia Azzurra (blue jersey) as the race leader. Kwiatkowski now wears the Maglia Blanca (white jersey) for best young rider.

"To be fair, we went fast, we went hard, but the faster you go in the team time trial the easier it feels," Cavendish said. "We were really smooth with the pace the whole way. You almost feel like you didn't go fast enough when it's like that. The team time trials where we've normally felt the best are when we win by a lot. We really feel OK at the end.

"We did the course many times yesterday and the day before. We knew every corner, we knew exactly where we had to go, and we knew our form. I'm really happy. We have a very strong, dedicated team.

"Everybody was nervous. Alessandro Petacchi, in his 20 years as a professional, this is his first team time trial. So he was nervous coming into this. But for me, we have the fastest bike in the peloton with the Specialized Shiv. It's really fast. The work we do as well is not just any kind of work to prepare for our time trials during the season.

"Specialized puts the bike in their own wind tunnel with every rider. Every rider is as aerodynamic as they can be, individually. With the aerodynamics we have the fastest bikes around. We also have a super committed team. Things like that really add up. It was really nice to get this win for the whole team and we can celebrate today.

"I'm really happy. It's really satisfying. This is always the first WorldTour race you do in the year and you always get a feeling of the form of the team here. The team time trial is special because everything has to go right. It's not about individuals, eight people have to do everything right at the same time. That's quite a hard thing to do, so it's so, so rewarding when you get to stand on the podium together.

"We've had a really good ambience in the team in the last few days. We've done many circuits of the course, we knew the corners, we knew what we had to do. So today we just came out and said 'Lets go and race'. Ultimately it was pretty easy because we got everything right.

"Again, Tony [Martin] did half the race alone and [Michal] Kwiatkowski did some big pulls. Then everybody else tried to do what they could for the team. There was no egos, no pride. Everyone just wants to make the team go as fast as possible. It's nice to come to Tirreno-Adriatico, take the azzurra jersey and then try for the sprints in the next few days."

Television images captured the moment when Mark Cavendish got a push from teammate Martin. Cavendish played down the incident, saying that it not been to increase his speed.

"The problem is when we turned left on the straight road after the descent. After a corner, you want to put the power down," he said.

"And as always happens, my chain came off. It's a problem with SRAM, which we've talked about many times. So my chain came off, my foot came out and Tony was behind me at 50km/h. He has to come up to not go over my back wheel.

"It didn’t make us go faster, it was really to stop us crashing. I don’t think anything happened, it was to stop us falling off.

"I'm excited to start Tirreno-Adriatico with this team. "I'm lucky to have Renshaw and Petacchi as my final men this year, they're two of the most experienced guys, the most intelligent guys when it comes to a sprint. But we've got a great team here for the whole race.

"We want to win the sprints, we wanted to win the team time trial, in the mountains and win the GC. We've got Kwiatkowski, who is in great form, and the team has good morale, so across the whole seven days, we'd like to be successful in every way."

"I think we, at minimum, have the same quality team as last year," UCI World TT Champion Tony Martin said. "For sure we wanted to win. On paper we had the strongest guys, we had the perfect preparation for the course as we were able to pass through it multiple times at race speed. So, the preparation was perfect and with the team being so strong and so motivated, it was actually an easy day. Not easy as in we weren't suffering, but we were just so focused in the head we were basically calm this morning.

"We stuck to the plan. Actually I think we did almost exactly the same performance as we did in training. We just went a bit faster. Then, we have for sure the fastest bike in the Specialized Shiv. On top of that we had the correct order because it is also important you do not want to have too much difference in the speed between the strongest guys and the others.

"We had a really good tempo, a good average speed. It was really nice. I was never scared we could lose the race. I had a good feeling. As for me, the next steps are to be useful for the team and then do my best for a top result in the individual time trial. I hope I can play a good role, especially in the final stages, and for sure I want to go for my own result on the last day here."