Scotland's David Millar and Wales' Geraint Thomas are both in the top four after the second stage of the Tour de France on Sunday.
Team Garmin-Cervelo won the 23km team time trial to claim their first Tour de France stage win and put Norway's Thor Hushovd in the leader's yellow jersey.
Millar is second overall, on the same time as team-mate Hushovd, while Cadel Evans of BMC lies one second behind.
Team Sky's Thomas moved up to fourth overall, four seconds off the pace.
Team Garmin-Cervelo recorded a time of 24 minutes, 48 seconds to win the stage by four seconds from BMC Racing and Team Sky.
The British-based Sky outfit had hoped to propel Thomas into the yellow jersey after the 25-year-old's sixth-placed finish on Saturday's opening stage left him only six seconds behind race leader Philippe Gilbert.
The team, which includes Thomas's fellow Olympic track pursuit gold medallist Bradley Wiggins, started quickly and recorded the quickest time of nine minutes, one second at the nine kilometre checkpoint, but were unable to keep up their pace.
"We attacked it like we said we would and it was a great effort by everyone," said Thomas, who retains the white jersey as the best young rider.
"We rode it well. We knew we were up [after the first checkpoint] but it wasn't even a second and we lost two guys quite early.
"We are a bit disappointed as we really wanted to win but Brad [Wiggins] is still up there in the general classification and that's what matters."
Wiggins is 12th in the overall standings and, along with Thomas, just four seconds behind leader Hushovd.
"Today wasn't about egos, it was about the performance of the team," he stated.
"We gained more time on some of the guys and it's been a fantastic start to this year's Tour. G [Geraint Thomas] was hungry and that's the only tinge of disappointment, that he didn't get the [yellow] jersey."
Andy Schleck's Leopard Trek team and Mark Cavendish's HTC-Highroad squad, which was was hampered by losing Bernhard Eisel to a crash early on, were five seconds behind Garmin-Cervelo, with Alberto Contador's Saxo Bank-SunGard squad eighth, 28 seconds behind.
The result means that three-time winner and pre-race favourite Contador is now one minute, 42 seconds adrift of Hushovd but more crucially, he is 1:41 and 1:38 behind Evans and Andy Schleck, who both share the past four runners-up places, respectively.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/cycling/14006633.stm
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