Primoz Roglic and Simon Yates remain on course for a Paris-Nice showdown on Saturday's climb stage after outsider Mathieu Burgaudeau of TotalEnergies won the hilly stage six on Friday with the main contenders finishing together.

Roglic of Jumbo retains the yellow jersey with British climb specialist Yates of Bike Exchange 39 seconds off the lead ahead of Saturday's snow-threatened summit finish in the Nice back-country.

Dani Martinez and Adam Yates of Ineos remain in contention, as does the Russian climber Aleksandr Vlasov or even Colombia's Nairo Quintana.

Roglic says he cannot concentrate on defending against one man.

"It's going to be a mass brawl and it'll be even more difficult in the snow," said the Slovenian former ski-jumper.

"I love snow, but not when you're on a bike. And after tomorrow night there will still be one stage left," said Roglic, who was leading until the final day last year.

Friday's stage was raced over 213.6km and took 5hrs 33min and 06sec with the 23-year-old Frenchman Burgaudeau breaking late with an unrelenting pace over the last 8km that just about got him across the line for his first World Tour win he described as torture.

"It wasn't planned, I counter attack another break and suddenly found myself alone out front. My legs felt great and it would have been stupid to do nothing with it," said the winner, who comes from a family of fishermen on the Atlantic island of Noirmoutier.

"The final was tortuous though."

The 2019 world champion, Denmark's Mads Pedersen came closest to catching Burgaudeau with Belgian Wout van Aert third across the line.

Saturday's penultimate stage finishes atop Nice's Col de Turini with 15km of climbing at 7.3 percent.