Sam Bennett timed his sprint to perfection to win the seventh stage of the Giro d'Italia, while British rider Simon Yates remained in the overall lead as the race went over to the Italian mainland on Friday.

Bennett was the last to launch his sprint but the Irish rider managed to edge out Elia Viviani — who had won two of the opening three stages — and claim his first win in a Grand Tour.

Niccolo Bonifazio was third in the bunch sprint at the end of the flat 159-kilometer (99-mile) route along the Calabrian coast from Pizzo to Praia a Mare.

"I'm really happy with that," said Bennett, who had finished third in each of Viviani's wins in this year's race. "I tried so hard the other days to get the win but never seemed to get the timing right.

"It was very hard to get Viviani's wheel, everyone wanted that wheel and we had to fight for it. At one point I thought we'd left it too late but the timing was right and I could use my power to get an advantage."

There was an early break of three cyclists and the peloton allowed Davide Ballerini, Markel Irizar and Maxim Belkov an advantage of more than four minutes before it began to reel them in.

They were caught with 14K remaining as the peloton powered to the sprint finish and victory for Bennett and his Bora-Hansgrohe team.

The general classification was unchanged and Yates, who won the young rider classification at last year's Tour de France, retained his 16-second advantage over defending champion Tom Dumoulin.

Yates' Mitchelton-Scott teammate Esteban Chaves remained third overall, 26 seconds behind the 25-year-old.

Four-time Tour de France winner Froome is in eighth place, 1 minute, 10 seconds behind.

Saturday's eighth stage sees the second mountain finish of this year's race at the end of a 209K (130-mile) route from Praia a Mare to Montevergine.

The Giro ends in Rome on May 27.