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Former five-times 500cc world champion Mick Doohan has compared Australia's latest star, Casey Stoner, to his own 'wild' rival Kevin Schwantz - and believes that, like Schwantz, Casey can also lift the world crown.
Stoner has taken an early MotoGP championship lead after a superb victory over series superstar and pre-season favourite, Valentino Rossi, during Saturday's Qatar Grand Prix - a race that also marked Stoner's debut with the Marlboro Ducati Team and the start of only his second season in the premier-class.
"Casey showed a lot of maturity. He didn't put a foot wrong. Rossi put all sorts of pressure on him and he stayed strong," Doohan told Australia's Herald Sun newspaper. "I think he did a great job. He's been threatening to do it for a while now. It was only ever a matter of time.
"It's a fantastic start to his season, so I just hope he can maintain some sort of consistency," Doohan added. "It's no good to win this week and finish eighth next week, because Rossi will be first or second at every race, week-in and week-out.
"Nicky Hayden did a great job last year to win the championship for Honda, but he only won it through being consistent when Valentino and Yamaha were not consistent."
Unfortunately for Stoner, while his raw speed has never been in question, consistency has been something of a weak point - costly crashes having ended his hopes of a world championship in either the 125 or 250cc classes and left him with seven DNFs during his rookie MotoGP season with Honda LCR.
However, Doohan believes Stoner now has everything else in place for a title charge - not least the ability to ride bar-to-bar with former five-times champion Rossi - and Mick now hopes the 21-year-old can follow in 1993 world champion Schwantz's footsteps by toning down his wild style enough to lift the crown
"I think [Stoner's] quite capable of running with Rossi. He's definitely fast enough. He just has to ease off on his wild streak," declared the former Honda rider. "He's no dill. He's been around for a while now, even though it's only his second season in MotoGP. He has been racing in GPs since he was 15 so he knows his way around and he knows all the tracks.
"He is a bit like Kevin Schwantz, who won the title with Suzuki. He's fast, but sometimes he throws caution to the wind a little bit and that doesn't always pay off. Still, it's easier to teach a fast bloke how not to crash than to teach a slow bloke how to go fast," declared Doohan.
One of Stoner's greatest assets during Saturday's race was the awesome top speed of his Desmosedici, which allowed the Australian to ease effortlessly around his rivals along the main straight. However, Doohan warned that the situation is unlikely to last:
"I'm sure [Yamaha and Honda] will be scratching their heads and wondering how to get more speed. Asking whether it is the tyres or the handling or the engine. If anything, the Yamaha looked to be a bit more agile in Qatar, but having that sort of speed advantage can't be bad for Stoner and Ducati," he said
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