Efimkin moved from third to hold­ing a com­fort­able 1:13 advan­tage with two rel­a­tively flat stages to go to close out the 47th Turkey tour. Rubens Bertogliati and Laszlo Bodrogi worked at the front of a siz­able and strong bunch to drop the race lead­ers and jump to the top step of the podium.

Efimkin, from Russia, fin­ished sec­ond in a close sprint on Thursday, and said he spent the night toss­ing and turn­ing, pon­der­ing a missed chance at a stage victory.

“I was hav­ing trou­ble sleep­ing all night because I lost yes­ter­day. I would nod off, then jolt awake and think - ‘Damn, I lost.’ When I woke up this morn­ing – well … I still lost yes­ter­day. But I was ready to go for stage six,” Efimkin said. “We got to the climbs and the first two guys on GC fell off the pace, they couldn’t hold the speed. There were some attacks at the front to split the group up fur­ther, but it in the end it was Rubens Bertogliati and Laszlo Bodrogi lead­ing the pack and drilling it for the line. The team is so strong, and I’ll sleep well tonight.”

Team Type 1 - sanofi-aventis General Manager Vassili Davidenko said team­work and an advan­ta­geous com­bi­na­tion of rid­ers in the front group made for a deci­sive move to drop the two lead­ing rid­ers on GC.

“Laszlo was up in the break, and Aleks was look­ing at the two guys ahead of him on GC to see if they could hold on the climb. Rubens was there and as soon as they saw that they couldn’t hold the pace, it was mano a mano,” Davidenko said. “Plus FDJ and Astana had an inter­est in mak­ing a podium switch. All respects are due to the Garmin and Liquigas guys for rid­ing as hard as they did and keep­ing the gap in check for as long as they did against 12 guys from three teams. This was a beau­ti­ful stage with a ter­rific view on an epic sea coast, and in the end we came out on top - you couldn’t ask for more.”

If Efimkin can hold on, it will be the first major vic­tory for Team Type 1 in Europe since it expanded its pro­gram com­ing into the 2011 season.

Belletti used his expe­ri­ence from pre­vi­ous starts at the Turkey tour to pace to vic­tory in a photo-finish against com­pa­triot Roberto Ferrari to win by a wheel-length. With time bonuses, Belletti takes a nar­row lead in the over­all standings.

“I know this stage from my pre­vi­ous times I’ve been here and it’s my favourite stage, so I am very glad I could stay near the front and sprint to vic­tory,” Belletti said. “I ded­i­cate this to my team because of the great help they gave me. You can never win in cycling with­out the help of the entire team.”

The vic­tory is Belletti’s third of the year and comes just ahead of the season’s major goal at the Giro d’Italia.

Belletti, a win­ner of a stage in last year’s Giro, said he will try to defend his nar­row four-second lead, but doesn’t want to risk going too deep before the Giro, set to start May 7 in Torino.

“Every day this race has a new leader. I didn’t come here for rid­ing GC but now I’ll try to keep the turquoise jer­sey, but if I hap­pen to lose it, I hope it’ll go to one of my team-mates,” Belletti said. “I hope to do well at the begin­ning of the Giro d’Italia because some stages suit me in the first two weeks, so I’m here in Turkey to go hard, but I also don’t want to arrive cooked at the Giro. So we’ll see how it goes tomor­row but at least I intend to be present in the com­ing sprints of the Tour of Turkey.”

The 47th Turkey tour con­tin­ues Wednesday with the 209km stage from Marmaris to Pamukkale. The hilly stage will be hard to con­trol and should see the major GC con­tenders move to the front of the action.

“The sprint was pretty nasty and with a lot of dan­ger­ous moves by many rid­ers. I started my sprint early with about 250m to go, but unfor­tu­nately wasn’t able to hold it. The team marked the yel­low jer­sey all day, espe­cially Aleksei Shmidt, but the climb wasn’t as hard as we expected and there was no change on the gen­eral clas­si­fi­ca­tion,” Bazzana said.

Team Type 1’s Will Dugan remains in third place over­all, eight sec­onds back from Austrian rider Markus Eibegger. The team has shown strong form in each stage so far, with Dugan in sec­ond place on the first day, Bazzana fourth on stage two, and Scott Stewart third on stage three.

Thursday is a rest day, with rac­ing set to resume on Friday over 192km north from Taebaek to Yangyang on the Sea of Japan.

Voeckler out-smarted Italian ace Michele Scarponi to claim the stage fin­ish­ing up an explo­sive final climb that saw the pack break up under pres­sure from the attacks. Scarponi slipped into the over­all leader’s jer­sey while Voeckler moved into the top-5 over­all after his sixth win on the 2011 cam­paign for the French nation cham­pion. A four-man break­away was swept up com­ing into the final deci­sive climb and Voeckler had the legs to fol­low the attack­ing Scarponi. The pair carved a 30-second lead on the chas­ing lead­ers and Voeckler kicked his way to another huge win for Colnago.

Colnago-CSF Inox had another strong out­ing as well, with Domenico Pozzovivo rid­ing in with the front group to climb into sev­enth over­all at 31 sec­onds back.

The four-day Trentino tour con­tin­ues Thursday with the 170km third stage from Molino di Ledro to Fai della Paganella. The moun­tain­ous course includes three first-category climbs, with 11km final sum­mit fin­ish with ramps as steep as 7 percent.

Jérôme earned his first win on the 2011 cam­paign in spec­tac­u­lar fash­ion. Europcar was active through­out the race, with Cyril Gautier and Tony Hurel attack­ing early to put the pres­sure on the oppos­ing teams. Jérôme was the team’s final card and he bridged up to an ear­lier move, then dropped every­one except Canadian Will Routley. The pair came to the line and Jérôme exe­cuted the per­fect sprint to claim the flowers.

“It was a flaw­less per­for­mance today. The entire team rode to per­fec­tion,” said Europcar sport direc­tor Peter Guével. “This is well-deserved. He’s been rac­ing well for quite awhile and we knew it would only be a mat­ter of time before he could win.”

The vic­tory is the 13th for Europcar on the 2011 sea­son and the first for Jérôme since the 2007 season.

Savini attacked with a vengeance with two kilo­me­ters to go up the first-category sum­mit to the Laguna de los Peces that none of the over­all favorites could answer. He caught the wheel of rid­ers from an ear­lier break­away and then soloed home the vic­tory seven sec­onds ahead of new leader Bauke Mollema.

Domenica Pozzovivo capped off the superb per­for­mance by Colnago-CSF Inox to cross the line third with the same time as Mollema and slot­ted into fourth over­all at 6 sec­onds back.

“I could sense the oth­ers were watch­ing each other and decided to attack,” Savini said. “I man­aged to make a nice gap and that made me even push harder. I am very con­tent with the vic­tory. It pays back the hard work of the team this week.”

The vic­tory is Savini’s first since the 2008 sea­son and the third for Colnago-CSF Inox of 2011.

Pozzovivo, mean­while, will have a chance to secure a final podium spot if he can have a strong per­for­mance in the short, 11.4km indi­vid­ual time trial in Saturday’s fourth stage.

David Gaudin and Canadian David Veilleux rode fan­tas­ti­cally in the 258km bat­tle over the cob­ble­stones. Veilleux pulled clear in the day’s early break and then Gaudin bridged out after com­ing through the treach­er­ous Arenberg sec­tor of cobbles.

Gaudin held on to fin­ish 16th while Veilleux was 25th in his Roubaix debut at 3:45 back.

“We wanted to have a rider present in the break, so to have two of us there was a suc­cess already,” Veilleux said. “It was really hard to get into the break. Everything was get­ting chased down. I made a few efforts before one finally worked. I am sat­is­fied in my first Roubaix, but I was really suf­fer­ing in the end.”

Gaudin and Veilleux were in good com­pany, because Johan Van Summeren attacked out of their group to claim a solo vic­tory in cycling’s most pun­ish­ing one-day race.

“Overall, I am con­tent with the per­for­mance,” Gaudin said. “When Van Summeren attacked, I tried to fol­low, but he was too strong. I entered the velo­drome rid­ing for sev­enth place, so I am a lit­tle unhappy about my sprint. At the end of a long effort like that, it’s a ques­tion of who has the legs. This was my third Roubaix and my best one as a pro­fes­sional. It makes me more moti­vated for the future.”

Up next is Amstel Gold Race on April 17 over the steep hills of south Holland.

The 36-year-old Scheirlinckx earned his first vic­tory since 2002 in a dar­ing four-man break­away that held on to chal­lenge for the spoils in the 199.2km race.

The Belgian vet­eran used his savvy to fend off Marco Marcato in a long sprint to claim the most impor­tant vic­tory of his career.

“I was dis­ap­pointed at the Tour of Flanders because I missed the group of favourites. Despite the dis­ap­point­ment, I knew the legs were good,” he said. “In the break­away today, I knew right away that the most dan­ger­ous would be Marcato. To win, I had to use all of my expe­ri­ence. That’s why I tried to sur­prise Marcato with a long sprint.”

The vic­tory is the third on the 2011 sea­son for Landbouwkrediet.

Kocjan fin­ished sec­ond at the Fleche d’Emeraude on April 3 just days after the team lost all its bicy­cles, spare parts, equip­ment and tools on the final day of a stage race in Italy when unknown thieves broke into locked vehi­cles overnight and stole an esti­mated 500,000 euros worth of equipment.

“I was fol­low­ing a FDJ rider to his right, but he moved my way and I had to come around his left side. I was faster, but with the delay the Cofidis rider came up the mid­dle and beat me to the line. We had a tough week after Coppi e Bartali, and it’s very nice for the team and staff to have a good fin­ish after all the hard work,” said Kocjan. “We want to win, that’s our goal, but to be back at this level as quickly as we did shows how hard every­body worked to get the team on its feet.”

The team’s European squad con­tin­ues this week with the Circuit de la Sarthe in France, April 5-8.