Australia's Richie Porte remains in the box seat to take overall honours in the Criterium du Dauphine after young German Phil Bauhaus beat the big-name sprinters to victory on stage five.
The 22-year-old edged four French riders at the finish line to claim his biggest career win.
Porte won Wednesday's individual time trial to sit 27 seconds adrift of overall leader Thomas De Gendt (Lotto-Soudal), a margin maintained after Thursday's stage.
Bauhaus took his first World Tour victory ahead of stage two winner Arnaud Demare of FDJ and Direct-Energie's Bryan Coquard, while Nacer Bouhanni (Cofidis) and Alexander Kristoff (Katusha-Alpecin) could only manage fifth and sixth respectively.
"Today I felt I had good legs from the beginning of the stage so I was confident for the sprint. My legs were good enough to take them on," Bauhaus said.
De Gendt finished in the pack to retain his overall lead - although he will expect to be spending his last day in the yellow and blue jersey on Friday with the general classification battle about to come alive.
This was the last opportunity for the sprinters before the race heads to the mountains for the final three days, with Britain's three-time Tour de France champion Chris Froome needing to make up time after he could only manage eighth place on Wednesday's time trial.
He sits sixth overall, 64 seconds down on De Gendt, but it is his former teammate Porte who is seen as in pole position for overall victory.
The Tasmanian, now with BMC, is in second place with 37 seconds in hand over Froome.
On Thursday morning, French newspaper L'Equipe published a story suggesting Froome wants to ride for BMC next year, but the Sky man told Cycling News the story was "complete rubbish" while BMC also denied any interest.
In 2016, Froome signed a contract with Team Sky which runs until the end of the 2018 season.
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