MONTPELLIER, France — Over two days, Lance Armstrong showed his rivals that his desire to lead his teammates to victory was very much alive after nearly four years in retirement.

The seven-time Tour de France winner, who had been written off by most of the cycling experts before the race started last week in Monaco, almost took the yellow leader's jersey after the impressive collective triumph of his Astana team in Tuesday's team time trial.

A day after surging in a key breakaway to gain valuable time over his rival and teammate Alberto Contador, Armstrong moved up from third place to second overall and only trails race leader Fabian Cancellara of Switzerland by a few hundredths of second.

"That's the way it is. We did our best. At one point, we thought we had it (the yellow jersey), but if I look back on our performance ... we were as sound as we could be," Armstrong said. "I have no regrets. I don't look at that and lose sleep or get disappointed. That's when they stopped the clock. This is a long race, maybe there's one (yellow jersey) in my future."

Astana was timed in 46 minutes, 29 seconds for the 24.2-mile ride in and around Montpellier. That was 18 seconds better than Garmin, with Saxo Bank third, 40 seconds back.

Armstrong and Cancellara share an overall time of 10 hours, 38 minutes, 7 seconds, although the Swiss rider was deemed a fraction ahead. Organizers examined Saturday's opening time trial in Monaco that was won by Cancellara — the results calculated to the thousandth of a second.

"That's Swiss timing," Cancellara said, laughing.