Wout Van Aert survived an early crash to take second place in the second stage in Orleans.

In a breathless race, the strength of the Jumbo-Visma group came to the fore again when the peloton split to the echelon in the last 70km.

In the ensuing group sprint, Van Aat lost to Fabio Jacobsen (Quick Step-Alphavinil), but Jumbo-Visma teammate Christophe Laporte took the yellow jersey in third place.

Jumbo-Visma, who had an impressive first stage, retained the top three places overall, with Laporte five seconds ahead of Van Aert and 11 seconds ahead of Roglic.

"I was expecting a bigger time gap," Van Aert said. 'But everything came back. [The legs were good, so I'm happy. We had a good race. The team was well prepared and we pushed a few times. But in my opinion, there were too few Classics riders and too many GC riders to make a big gap. In the end, Primosch came through unscathed.

Jumbo Visma briefly managed to pull Simon Yates (Bike Exchange Jayco) and Adam Yates (Ineos) away from the front of the race, but they soon caught up with the leading pack, which included Nairo Quintana (Alcare Sumsic), Jack Hague ( Bahrain Victorious) and Alexandre Brasov (Bora-Hansgrohe) also finished.

"Michael (Tunissen) had a flat tire and Rohan (Dennis) had mechanical problems. But we were still there," Van Aert said, admitting that he was not fast enough to catch Jacobsen in the final sprint.

"We did a good job for GC in Primosch and Christophe did a perfect lead out at the finish. Jacobsen was stronger."

Van Aert finished with a cut on his left knee, but downplayed the effects of his early stage crash and his subsequent early race push.

"When there was a pile-up in front of me, I couldn't brake. They braked pretty hard in front of me and it was just a stupid crash.

Like Van Aert, Laporte had just started the season on opening weekend, but he had a strong start to his first campaign since moving from Cofidis. She came close to winning in the Coulee Brussel-Coulomb and led the Jumbo-Visma exhibition in the first stage of the Paris-Nice race.

In Monday's finale, Laporte tracked a dangerous move by Stefan Bissegger (EF Education-Easy Post) and created the force to lead Van Aert in the sprint.

"It was a very tense day and I didn't have much time to think about yellow. 'Primosch is for the GC, Wout is for the sprint. My goal was to keep Primosch at the top.

"In the finale there was an attack and we tried to control AG2R and Bahrain, we knew QS would lead the sprint, we knew we would have to go for it, we knew we would have to go for it, we knew we would have to go for it. I set up a sprint for Wout with 400m to go and I think it all worked out.