CHRIS Lawless delivered a first success for Team Ineos as he sealed overall victory in the Tour de Yorkshire.

Greg Van Avermaet, last year's overall winner, took the win on stage four from Halifax, but had Lawless - in the race leader's blue jersey - on his wheel as the 23-year-old from Wigan celebrated the first stage-race victory of his career.

It was also a first win for Ineos, the new-look Team Sky following Sir Jim Ratcliffe's buy-out, with the team only relaunched on Wednesday ahead of this race.

Lawless' final margin of victory was just two seconds over Olympic champion Van Avermaet.

But with four of Lawless' team-mates within 10 seconds of the lead, Ineos held all the cards and played them perfectly on Sunday, in a course which also went up Haworth's Main Street and through Skipton.

Ineos had brought the 175km stage through the Yorkshire Dales to life in Otley with a double attack.

Chris Froome went first, drawing out Van Avermaet and Alexander Kamp, who started the day level on time with Lawless, before Eddie Dunbar moved again.

The Irishman quickly caught the remnants of the day's breakaway and was in position to win the race himself as they moved into the final five kilometres before Van Avermaet stepped up the chase.

Lawless followed however, meaning Van Avermaet had to make do with a stage win while the blue jersey stayed on Lawless' shoulders.

"I can't believe it," Lawless said. "If someone had told me that I'd win this race when I was coming here I'd call them a bare-faced liar. I didn't think it was possible.

"It's my first general classification win and coming in essentially a home race it's pretty unbelievable," the Lancastrian said.

"I never expected to be that far up on GC, let alone win it. I surprised myself. I'm shell-shocked really.

"I've got to really thank the team for putting faith in me. I've got a good history of performing on courses like this and the team looked at how I was going on the stage yesterday and said, 'Yeah, we'll give you a shot' and I'm glad they did."

Lawless may only be 23 years old, but he is already a veteran of the Tour de Yorkshire, having started all five editions.

Each one has been in different colours - first Wiggins, then JLT-Condor, Axeon-Hagens Berman, Team Sky and now their new guise as Ineos.

"(Ineos) have effectively saved the team, there's 30 riders, over 100 staff - they've kept everyone in a job," he said. "They saved the team so to repay them like this at a home race, I'm really happy to do that."