'The real fight starts now' - Seixas and Ayuso preview brutal Dauphiné finale

While both Paul Seixas (Decathlon CMA CGM) and Juan Ayuso (Lidl-Trek) expect the weekend’s Alpine tests to prove more decisive, stage 6 will still be an important opening act in the brutal Dauphiné finale.

"Today we'll be keen to make the race harder," Seixas told reporters including CyclingPro.net before the start. "We're hoping for a small battle among the favourites, and it should be a good day to test ourselves."

Seixas suggested that the summit finish to Crest-Voland on stage 6 may not create major differences between the top contenders, but will still provide a chance to gauge their form nonetheless.

"It's not an extremely long climb, and it's not very hard, so we're not expecting crazy gaps today," said Seixas. "The goal is to test the legs a bit and see how things go."

The French teenager also acknowledged the brutality of the remaining stages and believes that the race will be more influenced by sheer strength over a tactical edge. 

“I don't think there's much psychological battle now," he said. "It's going to be straightforward. When you look at the next two stages, they're going to be very hard. The objective today is to test ourselves and see how we'll ride over the next few days."

Among those he expects to be strong on the run-in to Crest-Voland is Matteo Jorgenson (Visma | Lease a Bike), whose punchy climbing style may be well suited to the effort required.

“So today, I expect perhaps [Matteo] Jorgenson to be better than on the next few days, and I think he'll be really strong today. I raced a bit against him at the Ardèche Classic, and he was really strong on this type of effort,” explained Seixas before highlighting other key opposition. 

“After that, the bigger question is more about the next few days. And then there are a few riders like [Juan] Ayuso, [Isaac] del Toro, and [Oscar] Onley who are very well placed,” said Seixas. “We'll see who can get involved in the battle, but I think today will be more open than the next few days.

Among the riders hoping to challenge Seixas in the mountains is Ayuso, who expects Stage 6 to provide the first telling benchmark of his form after returning to action following a lengthy training block.

"Already quite hard for the last five days, but now the real fight for the GC starts," said Ayuso.

Ayuso explained that he is eager to discover how his training performances translate against rivals in race conditions.

"These first five days were a nice transition from a long period without racing back into competition," said Ayuso. "In training you can be one way, but then you have to see where you are compared to your rivals. Today's the first day we can really see where we are."

Like Seixas, however, the Spaniard expects the most significant time gaps to emerge over the weekend rather than on Friday's stage.

"I think it's a tricky stage today compared to what we have tomorrow and after tomorrow, which are just really hard from the start and yeah, going to be very selective from the start," said Ayuso

Ayuso also added that Lidl-Trek hopes to use its strength in depth with both himself and Mattias Skjelmose handily placed in the GC in fifth and sixth respectively, tied on 47 seconds behind the race leader Alex Baudin (EF Education-EasyPost).

"I think Skjelly [Mattias Skjelmose]  is also feeling really well," he said. "We hope we have two cards to play and that can play on our advantage."

Meanwhile, Seixas is in tenth, one minute from the yellow jersey, which he will be looking to make up over the next three stages in an attempt to become the first French winner of the Dauphiné since Christophe Moreau in 2007.