in the time trial on stage four. Froome won stage five after countering a late attack by Contador, to take the race lead by 52 seconds over teammate Porte. Froome helped Porte solidify his second place on stage seven, and on stage eight the pair rode away from their rivals on the final climb, with only Talansky () able to follow. Froome took second on the stage behind Alessandro De Marchi of , who had attacked earlier, to secure overall victory, with Porte completing a one-two, 58 seconds back. This was Froome's fourth major stage race victory of the season, out of the five he had entered. Froome's Tour de France got off to a nervy start as he crashed in the neutral zone of the first stage on the isle of Corsica, but he was unharmed. Also, he avoided going down in the large crash towards the end of the stage. After staying out of trouble for the rest of the first week, Froome won stage eight, the first mountain stage of the race, finishing on Ax 3 Domaines, by launching an attack after teammates Peter Kennaugh and Porte had brought back an earlier attack by 's Nairo Quintana, and distanced most of Froome's rivals. Froome's winning margin on the stage was 51 seconds over Porte, and 85 seconds to Valverde () in third. This gave Froome the overall lead in the Tour for the first time and the lead in the mountains classification. On the following stage, however, Froome was left isolated as no teammates were able to follow repeated attacks early in the stage by , and riders. Despite being without any team support for most of the stage, Froome was able to defend his lead by following several attacks by Quintana and Valverde. Froome then finished second in the individual time trial on the twelfth stage, twelve seconds behind Tony Martin, to put further time into all of his rivals. However, on stage thirteen Saxo-Tinkoff caused a split in the peloton due to strong crosswinds, which Froome missed. 's Contador and Roman Kreuziger, and Laurens ten Dam and Bauke Mollema of all made the selection and took 69 seconds out of Froome's lead, although Valverde lost over ten minutes and slipped out of contention. Froome won stage fifteen, which finished on Mont Ventoux. Kennaugh and Porte dropped all of the leading contenders except Contador on the