Peter Kennaugh underlined his potential once more when leading Team Sky home in 34th place on stage four of the Critérium du Dauphiné.

The youngster, who celebrates his 21st birthday next Tuesday, finished in the top 50 in Wednesday's time trial with a ride which came in for praise from Sports Director Sean Yates.

And Kennaugh was to the fore again on Thursday as the Dauphiné hit the mountains for the first time.

The longest stage saw the riders cover 211.5km from Saint-Paul-Trois-Châteaux and Kennaugh kept on strongly during the punishing 12.8km final climb to the summit finish at Risoul.

He finished one minute and 18 seconds behind winner Nicolas Vogondy (Bbox-Bouygues) and the display took him up to 27th on the general classification. He is now 5:44 adrift of Janez Brajkovic (RadioShack) who strengthened his grip on the leader's yellow and blue jersey by taking third on the stage.

Afterwards Yates told us: "It was actually Peter's longest-ever race and he got a bit hungry at the end but he held his own and it's a sign of things to come. He's a young rider with many more years in front of him."

Geraint Thomas, who is now a point behind Brajkovic in the points classification, remains Team Sky's leading rider in 19th on the overall standings after finishing in 58th.

Looking at the day as a whole Yates explained: "RadioShack took control as you'd expect and our plan was to look after G as much as possible and then see what he could do on that final climb.

"Edvald, Peter and all the guys did a great job doing that but as it turned out G wasn't quite on the best of days and just got burnt off in the last two or three kilometres - but he didn't lose too much time."

Story of the day

Team Sky had moved to the front of the peloton approaching the final climb, with Edvald Boasson Hagen and Thomas at the head of affairs.

But RadioShack, defending Brajkovic's jersey, controlled the race after that through Chris Horner as an earlier break was reeled in.

Stefan Denifl (Cervélo) and Danny Pate (Garmin) had gone clear after just 30km and stayed away until that final climb.

Pate was caught with relative ease but Denifl battled bravely on his own until he was finally passed with 2.5km remaining.

The last few kilometres had been marked by a series of attacks, among them one from Team Sky's Sylvain Calzati who tried to get away with 4.5km remaining, but the decisive move came from Vogondy.

The former French national champion timed his break to perfection when kicking clear 2km from the 1,870m summit.

He was never headed from that point and crossed the line 12 seconds ahead of compatriot Romain Sicard (Euskaltel), with Brajkovic a further three seconds back in third, just ahead of reigning Tour de France champion Alberto Contador (Astana).

Brajkovic extended his advantage in the general classification to 1:15 from Tejay Van Garderen (HTC-Columbia), with Contador 1:41 back in third.

Looking ahead to Friday's fifth stage from Serre Chevalier to Grenoble, Yates expects more of the same: "You'd think tomorrow is going to be a pretty similar situation," he said. "RadioShack have showed they are strong and Brajkovic illustrated the sort of form he is in by holding off Contador today."