AJACCIO, Corsica — Near the start line in Bastia, Corsica, on Sunday morning, fans and journalists milled about in the bright sun as they waited for the team buses to arrive. Typically, they would have been hoping to catch a glimpse of their favorite riders or chat with a team manager for the latest scoop.

But after a chaotic opening day at the Tour de France, when the Orica-GreenEdge team bus became stuck at the finish line with the riders quickly approaching, it was the bus drivers who were in the spotlight before the second stage, won by Jan Bakelants of RadioShack-Leopard.

Gary Atxa, the driver for Orica-GreenEdge, an Australian team, was in particularly high demand. Arriving late to the finish in Bastia on Saturday, he wedged the team’s bus beneath a metal frame hanging over the finish line. He eventually worked the bus free, but not before triggering a series of race-altering events that resulted in a major crash involving overall contenders like Alberto Contador. After the stage, Orica-GreenEdge was fined 2,000 Swiss francs, or $2,116, for “not respecting the scheduled time” for arriving to the finish.

“This was my first day driving the bus, so it’s not a good start,” Atxa told the European sports network Eurosport on Sunday. “I tried to sleep, but I had a lot on my mind.”

He received support from colleagues like David Deroo, the Argos-Shimano driver, whose team’s young German sprinter, Marcel Kittel, started Stage 2 in the yellow jersey after escaping the large pileup in the final miles of Saturday’s stage.

“Every bus driver makes a mistake,” Deroo said as he set up barriers around his bus to protect riders from the anticipated crowd. “Every day it’s a stressful job for everyone here on the race. For the mechanic, for the soigneur. But you see how big our vehicle is and how expensive it is. It’s a big responsibility we have.”

For professional cyclists, their buses are beacons in the throng of fans, journalists and organizers at the beginning and end of each stage — a refuge from the chaos of the Tour de France, a place to recharge and recover.

On Sunday, Kittel was one rider who was not ready to get back to the bus. Although Kittel, 25, lost more than 17 minutes, and the yellow jersey, on a medium-mountain stage, he relished every minute of the 96.9-kilometer ride from Bastia to Ajaccio.

“I had goose bumps; there were so many people screaming my name,” he said. “Unfortunately, we lost the yellow jersey, but that’s what we had expected.”

Kittel still wears the green jersey as the race’s best sprinter, but barely. The stage winner, Bakelants, was meters from being caught at the finish line by a charging peloton, including Peter Sagan, second in the sprint points competition, who would have taken the green jersey if he had won the stage.

“At 500 meters, I said to myself, ‘Hold on; this is going to be a nice day of your life,’ ” Bakelants said. “When I crossed the finish line, I was overwhelmed by joy.”