Team Sky’s Froome had seen his advantage over Italy’s Vincenzo Nibali cut to 1min 16sec yesterday, prompting suggestions the Briton could falter in the closing days of the Grand Tour.

Froome responded in fine fashion at the close of today’s 169 kilometre stage, which featured four challenging climbs.

The general classification contenders allowed a 20-strong breakaway group to move clear at nearly 60km of the stage, with their lead increasing to over 10 minutes.

France’s Alexis Gougeard and Armée moved clear on the penultimate climb of the day, but were later caught by Spain’s Marc Soler, France’s Julian Alaphilippe and Kazakhstan’s Alexey Lutsenko.

Lutsenko and Armée pulled away on the final downhill section of the race, with the latter then climbing to victory in Santo Toribio de Liébana in a time of 4 hours, 9min and 39sec.

Having withstood attacks from Spain’s Alberto Contador, Froome attacked from the group of general classification favourites in the closing kilometre.

The Briton would finish 12 seconds behind Italy’s Fabio Aru, who had escaped earlier from the group.

Froome would gain four seconds on The Netherlands’ Wilco Kelderman and Russia’s Ilnur Zakarin, but crucially ended 21sec clear of Nibali.

"Gaining 21sec on Vincenzo Nibali feels great, especially after a difficult day yesterday," said Froome.

"It's good to bounce back again.

"The morale is still good, the team is still strong, and we're just looking forward to getting through these next couple days."

Froome now leads the overall standings by 1:37 from Nibali, as he edges closer to becoming the third man to win the Tour de France and Vuelta a España in the same season.

Kelderman lies third at 2:17 down, with Zakarin a further 12sec behind in fourth.

The peloton will tackle a 149.7km mountain stage from Caso to Gijón tomorrow.