Porte sustained a double puncture to his tyre after hitting a pothole in the final stretch of the journey into Lyon and his team made the call to swap bikes with fellow rider Kenny Elissonde who was close by.
Porte managed to re-enter the race with six kilometres left and finish the Stage in 39th place, holding his ninth overall spot in the GC standings two minutes and six seconds behind leader Primož Roglič.
Reflecting on the incident, the Tasmanian revealed the team had a plan in place to deal with such a situation during the Stage.
"I came around the corner in front of the bunch, and there was a huge pothole which wasn't ideal," Porte said. "So I had a double puncture. But Kim Andersen (Trek-Segafredo's directeur-sportif) had said the roads probably weren't the best in the final, so we knew Kenny was to always be close by."
"Luckily as soon as it happened, Kenny was close by and I was able to jump back on and eventually come back to the bunch."
Fortunately for him, the 35-year-old didn't find too many differences with Elissonde's bike and was able to easily adjust.
"The only difference was that his brakes are a lot looser than mine are," Porte said. "So it was a little bit hair-raising coming into the finale, but it all worked out well."
Porte was glad that he was able to swap bikes with Elissonde and not fellow Trek rider Jasper Stuyven, due to the size difference between the two.
"It's lucky that Kenny's my size," Porte said. "If I had to take Jasper's bike I'm not sure I'd have been able to touch the pedals, he's a fair bit bigger than me!"
"It was a close shave, but we were lucky to come away with no time loss."
The Tasmanian then had to fight hard to get back amongst the peloton and recalled the breakaway of Stage winner Søren Kragh Andersen as a possible reason for how he was able to do so.
"I think I was lucky that by that time Søren had attacked and everybody was looking at each other," Porte said. "I think it slowed up in the front because I got back at the bottom of the climb and it was all good."
The 2020 Tour de France continues with Stage 15 where you can expect yellow jersey fireworks as we head 174kms from Lyon to the Grand Colombier. Watch the race on the SBS ŠKODA Tour Tracker from 8:15pm AEST and on SBS HD / SBS On Demand from 8:30pm AEST.
