The Slovenian and his UAE teammates were again present at the head of the peloton for much of the day, especially on the final climb as they paced hard to bring back a breakaway that had separated one-by-one.
As stage winner Bob Jungels (AG2R Citroen) entered the last five kilometres of the stage, his gap to Pogacar and the peloton was still over a minute and a half, and as race vision followed him to the finish it was unclear how much distance the bunch had covered.
That was until Pogacar and Jonas Vingegaard (Jumbo-Visma) exploded around the final corner only moments after fourth-placed Thibaut Pinot (Groupama-FDJ) had finished, the two overall favourites rocketing out of the bunch with the yellow jersey leading the charge.
Once again, Pogacar flexed his muscle to clearly prevent rival Vingegaard, or anyone for that matter take any time from him heading into the second rest day of the race, where he can relax having already won two stages and taken the maillot jaune.
"It has been a good day," Pogacar said after the stage. "With a very strong performance from my team to show that I can rely on my teammates as much as they can rely on me.
"Our plan was not to have a battle today and keep everything tight, under control.
"The beginning was hard as a very strong breakaway group went away and it took many kilometres for it to conform, but later on it all went down to the plan.
"I’m happy to go into the rest day with the yellow jersey. I’m quite confident and very motivated ahead of the second week."
UAE have been one of the most prominent teams in the peloton so far, always working to bring back breaks and limit losses whilst having a generational rider in their ranks.
Team rider George Bennett revealed after stage nine that while the yellow jersey was at one point in danger when Rigoberto Uran (EF Education EasyPro, 16th before the stage) joined the break, UAE knew with a rider like Pogacar, they could afford to lose it.
When Bennett was asked by SBS' Gracie Elvin if supporting the yellow jersey was a stressful experience, he answered, "Not really, I wouldn't say it's stressful.
"Maybe you invest a bit more physically but I don't think it's a stressful thing with Tadej because we can afford to lose it.
"Today, if we lost it we lost it, no one was going to worry too much.
"If we can close a race without going over our limit, we'll do it but we also have to think ahead that next week's maybe one of the hardest weeks in Grand Tours that I've seen recently."
The Tour de France now enters a rest day, with racing resuming on Tuesday night (AEST) with a 148-kilometre stage from Morzine les Portes du Soleil to Megeve. Watch all the action live from 9:20pm AEST on the SBS SKODA Tour Tracker, or 9:30pm AEST on SBS and SBS On Demand.
