Starting the day one man down after Timmy Duggan’s frightful crash on Wednesday, an inspired Slipstream-Chipotle won the Tour de Georgia’s stage 4 team time trial Thursday at the Road Atlanta automotive raceway.

Slipstream rode four laps of Road Atlanta’s rolling 2.5-mile racetrack in 19:36, 3.41 seconds faster than Astana, at an average speed of 29.14 miles per hour.

The High Road team of race leader Greg Henderson finished third, 5.2 seconds back. Henderson retained the race lead, and because of time bonuses during the first three stages now sits 15 seconds ahead of race favorites Tom Danielson and Trent Lowe and 19 seconds ahead of race favorite Levi Leipheimer.

Team CSC finished fourth on the day, 12.72 seconds off Slipstream’s time, while Toyota-United was the top domestic team in fifth, 23 seconds down. After rolling out of the start with only seven riders, Slipstream finished with just four men — Christian Vande Velde, Dave Zabriskie, Lowe and Danielson, the 2005 Georgia winner.

Tyler Farrar, Slipstream’s highest-placed GC rider heading into the stage, was dropped on the third lap.

The first team time trial in the Tour de Georgia’s six-year history featured a sharp hill that reached a maximum of 15 percent grade in the first 500 meters prior to several sharp turns.

With the times taken on the fourth rider across the finish line, the demanding course forced teams to strategize how best to tackle the short, intense effort. Slipstream entered the climb in the small chain ring each lap, a tactic designed to avoid the type of disaster that befell Bissell’s Tom Zirbel, a top-10 finisher in the individual time trial of February’s Amgen Tour of California.

Zirbel dropped his chain on the second lap and never regained contact with his teammates. In order to make up for Zirbel’s absence and keep the pace high, Bissell’s Ben Jacques-Maynes sacrificed himself, taking a “monster pull” on the flatter backside of the course before swinging off.

In the end Bissell finished ninth, with just four riders — Richard England, Garrett Peltonen, Edward King and Jeremy Vennell.

“We saw other teams having problems with their chains on the hill, and we made the decision that everyone would come into the climb in the small ring,” Danielson said. “Our mechanics dialed in our bikes, and we didn’t have any problems.”

Because GE-Trek-Marco Polo was placed lowest on general classification the team rolled out of the start/finish area first, at 1 p.m., under sunny skies and mild winds.

The event’s 15 teams raced in pairs, separated by two-minute intervals, with Henderson’s High Road team heading out last, and on its own, at 3:41 p.m.

The Marco Polo team did little to improve its standing on GC, posting a time of 20:59 that would serve as the day’s slowest pace.

Team CSC, starting in heat three, was the first to break the 20-minute barrier, posting a 19:49. During that ride stage 2 winner J.J. Haedo pulled out of his pedal on the team’s second trip over the climb, and was forced to come to a complete stop and traverse up the course’s steep climb, losing contact. CSC crossed the line with five riders — Bobby Julich, Bradley McGee, Inigo Cuesta, Jason McCartney and Michael Blaudzun.

Slipstream rolled out in the fourth heat, two minutes behind Jelly Belly. In support of Duggan, who remained in Athens Regional Hospital Thursday for observation but is expected to make a full recovery, the team placed blue handlebar tape on its seat post featuring the words “Just Go Harder” — the slogan and name of Duggan’s Web site shared with longtime friend Ian Macgregor, who rides for Team Type 1.

“We could see that on each other’s seat posts, and we did it,” Danielson said. “We just went harder.”

Moments before the start Slipstream encountered an unexpected obstacle when UCI officials asked the team to remove special aerodynamic helmet covers.

“The race officials sent out a letter a month ago asking teams not to ride time trial bikes, aerodynamic helmets or clip-on bars,” Slipstream’s physiologist Allen Lim said. “And that was about it. So we started thinking about what we could do to make our guys faster, and that included aerodynamic helmet covers. But when we went to the start line the officials asked us to remove the covers, saying it was an aerodynamic advantage. It was definitely a gray area, but we respected their wishes.”

Race officials didn’t, however, question the team’s use of Zipp’s new 1080 deep aerodynamic wheels, ridden by Vande Velde and Danielson. Slipstream put in the fastest first lap of the day, with a 4:53, and carried its fastest pace to the line.

After the race both Lowe and Danielson were quick to credit teammate Danny Pate, who came off on the last lap. “It helped having guys who are experienced in the team time trial, like Vande Velde and Zabriskie,” Lowe said. “And Pate has a big, smooth engine as well. We probably had some of the best guys, as a team, for a race like this. I think we rode fantastically.”

Notable was the poor performance of Rock Racing, which boasts 2004 Olympic time trial champion Tyler Hamilton and former world time trial champion Santiago Botero.

Racing in heat five, Rock came apart early, with Kayle Leogrande dropped the second time over the hill and Botero coming off shortly afterwards. The team finished with four riders — Hamilton, Sevilla, Victor Hugo Peña and Mike Creed. Botero finished 2:21 behind his teammates. “We started out good, we had a decent first lap,” Hamilton said. “But team trialing is about practice, and this was the first one we’ve ever done as a team. There’s some room for improvement. We knew we didn’t have to finish with all eight. It was so short that if someone was struggling and could hang on the back and miss some pulls, that was fine, but we couldn’t really wait for anybody.

“We were really only going to wait for two guys, Santi Botero and Oscar Sevilla,” Hamilton said. “We would have waited for Botero, but he was really feeling awful today. He told us to go. It’s normal, people have bad days. But Santi is a class act. He didn’t want to hold up Sevilla. He believes in Sevilla, and that’s classy. A more selfish rider would have told the team to wait for him. Sevilla was really strong, and I think he has a good chance in the next couple of days. He’s really impressed me this week. Now he’s our one GC guy.”

Starting in heat seven, two minutes behind Toyota-United, Astana put in the fastest first lap, four seconds faster than Slipstream. But the team came apart soon thereafter.

Twenty-one-year-old Swiss rider Michael Schar, who crashed in the feed zone during stage 2 and separated his shoulder, was dropped early on and later abandoned. Astana came through at 9:46 after two laps, eight seconds slower than its first lap, but pulled within two seconds of Slipstream’s pace on the third lap at 14:47 after registering a 5:01 third lap.

During that third lap Leipheimer pulled away from the rest of the team on a straightaway and, at Chris Horner’s shouted request, had to come to a near standstill. “Chris was yelling ‘Stop! Stop!,” Leipheimer said. “So I let off, but he yelled, “No, you need to stop!” We were going pretty slow, and I lost a big chunk of time.” Astana crossed the line with five riders — Leipheimer, Horner, Antonio Colom, Aaron Kemps and Jose Luis Rubiera.

“Once we got it down to our core group of guys, our last lap was, I heard, the fastest of the whole race,” Leipheimer said. “Maybe we should have just started with those guys.”

“It was a hilly course,” Leipheimer said. “It really separates the riders and the team, and unfortunately we had three or four guys who just weren’t feeling it. We had one of our strongest guys with his shoulder out. But every team has their injuries and whatnot. No excuses, we just got beat.”

High Road was the last team to start, and kept Slipstream — and a crowd of several thousand, the biggest of the race so far — on its toes until the end. Henderson led five of his High Road teammates across the finish line, but the team fell just five seconds short of Slipstream’s time. Lowe, the best young rider of the 2005 Tour de Georgia while riding for Jittery Joe’s, moved into the best young rider’s jersey, six seconds ahead of High Road’s Craig Lewis.

Farrar, who led the young rider’s competition, dropped down to ninth, 1:43 down, but will wear Henderson’s sprint leaders jersey during Friday’s 133-mile stage from Suwanee to Dahlonega, which dishes up three category 3 climbs before a 20-mile descent into Dahlonega.