Chris Froome finished impressively to move up the general classification on stage five of the Vuelta a Espana while Nicolas Roche retained third place overall.

Froome was brought to the head of affairs by his Team Sky team-mates ahead of a hectic and technical finish into Alcala de Guadaira, and was able to put time into a number of key rivals.

Battling it out with the sprinters and lead-out trains, Froome surfed the wheels to cross the line in 12th, making sure he was on the right side of a split in the bunch on the uphill drag to the line.

That elevated the Tour de France winner back up to seventh overall, 35 seconds behind new race leader Tom Dumoulin (Giant-Alpecin).

Roche was also present near the front and maintained his impressive GC foothold in third, 16 seconds off the lead of the event after five stages.

In the sprint it was Caleb Ewan who prevailed, with the young Australian taking a maiden Grand Tour stage victory after a strong lead-out from his Orica-GreenEdge team.

After another day in the searing heat, Team Sky hit the front with 10km to go, after previously helping Froome back into the peloton following an earlier mechanical.

A difficult finish saw the peloton cross the line in a number of groups, with small gaps seeing Froome take eight seconds out of Nairo Quintana (Movistar) and 10 seconds out of Fabio Aru (Astana).

Mikel Nieve sits 12th overall despite a crash, with Sergio Henao four places further back in 16th. That was all enough to ensure Team Sky maintained their advantage of 21 seconds in the team classification.

"It was a strange start," Christian Knees told TeamSky.com. "No one really wanted to go in the breakaway. One rider went up the road but he didn't really want to go alone. He was waiting in front of the bunch to entice some others into riding across. Finally two more riders went. Then the race became a bit faster.

"After they'd built up a gap Giant-Alpecin chased them down. The bunch was quite nervous as the speed was fairly high. It was a little bit windy. Not really windy, but there was enough that people were expecting something to happen. A lot of people were looking to be at the front. 

"We stuck together quite well - always close to the front and trying to hold Chris there. We wanted to bring him into the final without him putting in too much effort. We had a little issue before Sevilla as Mikel was caught in a crash. He's fine and was able to get back to hold his good GC position.

"The final worked quite well for us. Froomey was up there in front of the split and gained some time on his main rivals. Nico could also hold on to third place on GC. All in all everything went well today and hopefully we can continue like this!"