It didn’t take long for Cadel Evans to crank up his 2008 season in winning fashion.

In just his second day of competition in a year when all eyes will be on the Silence-Lotto leader, last year’s Tour runner-up uncorked a winning sprint to out-kick the remnants of a breakaway in a hard-fought second stage at the Vuelta a Andalucía-Ruta del Sol in Spain.

It’s Evans first victory on European roads since the 2006 Tour of Romandie and bodes well for the 2008 campaign, when he will be outright favorite to win the Tour after last year’s winner Alberto Contador and his Astana teammates Levi Leipheimer and Andreas Kloden have been excluded from the race.

It was an exciting run in the hilly 176km run from Torrox Costa to La Zubia in the shadow of the Alhambra near Granada. Attacks came fast and furious in the Cat. 2 Puerto de Competa at 13km with riders such as José Rujano (Caisse d’Epargne) looking to make an impact.

A group of 19 riders eventually peeled away over the day’s second climb at the Cat. 3 Puerto de Salares with such heavy hitters as Evans and Denis Menchov (Rabobank) in the mix. Menchov later crashed at 42km, dropped back to the main peloton and eventually finished safely in the pack. Teammate Graeme Brown, winner of a stage in Mallorca last week, was forced to abandon with pain in his hip.

Perhaps keen to show that Silence-Lotto will be up to the job of leading the bigger races this season, they team put Johan Van Summeren, Dario Cioni and Mario Aerts in the front group with Evans to help drive the pace.

The leaders worked together over two more climbs and built up a maximum advantage of 3:40 over the day’s final climb at the Cat. 3 Puerto del Navazo at 76km. The main pack collaborated to reduce the advantage to 1:53 with 50km to go as the route turned toward the Sierra Nevada.

It was another wet and dangerous day in southern Spain, where winter storms blew across the usually sunny region to make for treacherous racing conditions.

QuickStep lost the services of two riders, with Gert Steegmans — who showed good form in Mallorca last weekend with a nice stage win Sunday — crashed out and received seven stitches on his chin as a souvenir. Addy Engels also abandoned following a nasty fall in Sunday’s opener.

Just as Andalucía-CajaSur was reducing the advantage on the long, grinding rising finish into La Zubia, overnight leader and Stage 1 winner José Antonio López Gil (Andalucía-CajaSur) lost contact with just 2km to go and gave up the chase.

Clement Lhotellerie (Skil-Shimano) finished 12th at 56 seconds behind Evans and inherits the overall lead from López Gil (Andalucía-CajaSur), who lost more than six minutes.

Pablo Lastras (Caisse d’Epargne) climbed to second at 51 seconds back with the victorious ProTour champion Evans moving into third overall at 2:23 back. Mikel Astarloza (Euskaltel-Euskadi) slotting into fourth at 2:27 back.

The victory was perfect for Evans, who celebrated his 31st birthday on Thursday.

The 54th Vuelta a Andalucía-Ruta del Sol continues Tuesday with the 174.5km third stage between Otura and Jaén featuring five rated climbs, with four Cat. 3s and one Cat. 2.