Bonjour le Tour! Hello and welcome to live coverage of stage 6 of the Tour de France - and the first summit finish of the race. I'm Felix Lowe and I'll be taking you through all the thrills and spills of an undulating day in the Vosges mountains.

Bantz! Matthews darts clear from the pack for that remaining point - Sagan jumps into his back wheel but doesn't bother coming round the Australian, who takes the point and turns round with a smile.

It will be interesting to see what happens when the peloton comes through the intermediate sprint, what with there being just one single point remaining for 15th place. Peter Sagan currently leads Michael Matthews by 144pts to 97pts with Elia Viviani on 92pts.

Oddly enough, there's a huge battle for the intermediate sprint points at Linthal, with Nils Pollit really giving his all. But the German is eventually beaten by Andrea Pasqualon who, with those 20pts, moves into, er, virtual 12th place in the green jersey standings. Andre Greipel, a shade of his former self, is a distant third.

Talking of the king of the mountains... Tim Wellens, the current polka dot jersey, is in the break today - again. Yesterday he added to his tally to move onto 17pts. His nearest opponent was also in yesterday's break, Toms Skujins, who is on 9pts. Then, in third, we have Belgium's Xandro Meurisse of Wanty, who is also in the break today.

Italy's Giulio Ciccone is the virtual yellow jersey on the road. The Trek rider started the day 1'43" down on Alaphilippe on GC and we all know how well he can climb from his results in the Giro, where he won a stage and took the king of the mountains competition.

The gap is up to five minutes now so it's looking good for these 14 riders ahead of the intermediate sprint and first climb.

After all, Groupama's Thibaut Pinot is the local rider who knows these roads like the back of his hands. He's well placed on GC having limited his losses well in the opening week and has made no bones about wanting to win today's stage.

The gap quickly grows to 3'38" with QuickStep, Ineos and Groupama-FDJ all near the front. It's going to be a big day for the GC riders which explains the latter two teams.

The Deceuninck-QuickStep team of yellow jersey Julian Alaphilippe sent men to the front to do some blocking - as did Lotto Soudal, who have both Wellens and De Gendt in the break - because they don't want any more riders getting ahead.

Right, we have 14 riders out ahead: Benoît Cosnefroy (AG2R-La Mondiale), Dylan Teuns (Bahrain-Merida), Serge Pauwels (CCC), Julien Bernard and Giulio Ciccone (Trek-Segafredo), Nikias Arndt (Sunweb), Natnael Berhane (Cofidis), Thomas De Gendt and Tim Wellens (Lotto-Soudal), Fabien Grellier (Total Direct Energie), Nils Politt (Katusha-Alpecin), Xandro Meurisse and Andrea Pasqualon (Wanty-Groupe Gobert) and André Greipel (Arkéa-Samsic).

Attacks from the gun coming from the man you'd always expect to attack from the gun: Thomas De Gendt, aka Mr Breakaway. And once again, it's him and Lotto Soudal teammate Tim Wellens, the polka dot jersey, who are both pushing to get in the break.

And it's started to rain...

They're off! The 175 riders zip through the official start after the neutral zone from Mulhouse. One non-starter today: New Zealander Paddy Bevin has left the race after breaking a couple of ribs in a fall during stage 4.

Today, however, is a very different matter - with seven categorised climbs, 44 KOM points and an extra-long final ascent to La Planche des Belles Filles which could well see one of the big favourites move into yellow...

Yesterday, Slovakian sensation Peter Sagan roared to Stage 5 glory in Colmar to extend his lead in the green jersey competition by beating Belgium’s Wout Van Aert and Italy’s Matteo Trentin in a reduced bunch sprint.