World team time trial champions BMC Racing lived up to their pedigree in the discipline by winning stage three of the Criterium du Dauphine to put Rohan Dennis in the yellow jersey.

The American team put in a strong performance on the testing, drag from Roanne to Montagny, with four of the men who had rode to victory in Ponferrada last year – Dennis, Tejay van Garderen, Manuel Quinziato and Daniel Oss.

Despite losing riders early – including Quinziato – the requisite quintet remained together to set a time of 29.58, the only team to go under the half-hour mark.

Team Sky, defending Peter Kennaugh’s race lead, were the last team out but after Ian Stannard and Wout Poels were dropped early in the course struggled to match the American team’s time.

The course involved an uphill start, which saw some teams lose riders very early on alongside Sky – Astana losing Dimitri Gruzdev and Tony Martin’s pace dropping Martin Velits and Niki Terpstra for Etixx-QuickStep.

At the intermediate time check, Sky were 17 seconds down on BMC Racing and lost another 17 in the latter half of the course to finish sixth on the day.

The result also means Chris Froome has time to make up on van Garderen in the mountains if he is to win the Dauphine for the second time in three years.

Big rivals Vincenzo Nibali (Astana) and Alejandro Valverde (Movistar) also made gains overall, with their teams finishing second and third respectively, at four and five seconds down on BMC Racing.

Joaquim Rodriguez was among the biggest losers though, with Katusha losing more than a minute on the day.

Tinkoff-Saxo will also have work to do at the Tour de France, if they want to avoid costing Alberto Contador time on stage nine, but this team – which finished 90 seconds down – is a very different one to the likely squad for the Tour.

The mountains will allow the GC men time to catch up overall in the bid to ride themselves into form ahead of the Tour de France, but for the time being Dennis will don yellow on stage four.

Criterium du Dauphine 2015: stage three – result

1) BMC Racing (USA) – 29.58hrs
2) Astana (KAZ) +4”
3) Movistar (ESP) +5”
4) Etixx-QuickStep (BEL) +18”
5) Orica-GreenEDGE (AUS) +23”
6) Team Sky (GBR) +35”
7) Team Cannondale-Garmin (USA) +43”
8) Lampre-Merida (ITA) +47”
9) IAM Cycling (SUI) +50”
10) LottoNL-Jumbo (NED) +54”

General classification

1) Rohan Dennis (AUS) – BMC Racing – 8.00.37hrs
2) Tejay van Garderen (USA) – BMC Racing – ST
3) Andriy Grivko (UKR) – Astana +4”
4) Vincenzo Nibali (ITA) – Astana – ST
5) Lieuwe Westra (NED) – Astana
6) Rein Taaramae (EST) – Astana
7) Michele Scarponi (ITA) – Astana
8) Gorka Izagirre (ESP) – Movistar +5”
9) Alejandro Valverde (ESP) – Movistar – ST
10) John Gadret (FRA) – Movistar