Carlos Sastre of Spain has taken the yellow jersey from Frank Schleck after winning an intriguing stage 17 of the Tour de France.

Sastre made his move on the famous L'Alpe-d'Huez and powered on to grab the overall lead from his CSC team-mate. He leads Schleck by one minute 24 seconds, ahead of Bernhard Kohl and Australian Cadel Evans .

Samuel Sanchez of the Euskaltel team, finished second to make it a Spanish one-two, with Luxembourg's Andy Schleck, brother of Frank, coming home third for CSC.

The battle for control of the race ahead of Saturday's crucial time trial over 53km came down to the third and final 'unclassified' climb of the day, the 13.3 km climb to the legendary Alpe d'Huez.

While Sastre gained a deserved victory after attacking early on the imposing climb, Australian rider Cadel Evans is still in contention because he is the best time trial rider of the leading challengers.

Evans - who trails Sastre by 1min 34secs - fought manfully to limit the damage all the way up the climb in a group that included Frank Schleck and his brother Andy, who had no interest in helping out Evans reel in Sastre.

Sastre gradually built up his lead from 23sec with 9km to go to over 2min but he may regret losing valuable seconds as he overdid the celebrations with metres to go.

After crossing the first major climb, the Col du Galibier, together the peloton containing all the race favourites was shaken up by the CSC team's bid to eliminate a few of their challengers on the more difficult Croix de la Fer.

At 29.9km long with an average gradient of five percent, it is considered a tough ascent. But it became even more demanding when Stuart O'Grady, then Fabian Cancellara upped the tempo at the front for CSC.

Cancellara's long pull at the front was an exercise in pain for the likes of Evans and his fellow contenders, all of whom however managed to hold on to come over the summit next to the yellow jersey.