Stoner feeling less pressure this year

The Ducati rider, who dominated the 2007 season with 10 victories, says that the build up to this weekend's opening race at Qatar has been far easier to cope with than in previous years now that he has proved his worth at the top level.

"The thing that's changed is that every other season I've gone into there has been a lot of expectation on me or a lot of bad press and media, talking about crashing and things like this," he said in the official pre-season press conference, where he was joined by Valentino Rossi and Dani Pedrosa.

"Now I have done it and we have achieved our goal, we can really go into this season and have a lot of fun."

Stoner who spent much of the winter period riding through a persistent shoulder injury, added that he felt that teams were now spending too much time testing and that he couldn't wait to get racing and put it all behind him.

"I think basically there is too much," he said. "There is only so much you can do and only so many things you can really improve on a bike. And there is only a certain amount of time anyway, but we just seem to be doing a lot of laps on a similar package to what we were on already, even if you are bringing a new bike in.

"We were lucky enough that we didn't have to do the second Sepang test so everything is going quite well for us."

Stoner also warned his rivals that he believes the new Ducati GP8 to be an even more competitive package than the bike that he dominated last season with.

"The weaknesses that we had last year we feel we have really improved upon, and almost eliminated," he said. "We have been very happy with the package so far. The Bridgestones are working really well. Now I feel we are a lot more competitive."

Having said all that, the 22-year-old Australian doesn't expect to be able to run away with the title in 2008 and pointed to strong crop of rookies moving up to the top class this season.

"The rookies are going unbelievably well," he said. "James Toseland has surprised and impressed me a lot. Of course, all the 250 riders we expected to be fast, but we will see in the next few races how the season is going to pan out.

"But I think the people alongside me [Rossi and Pedrosa] are always going to be the hardest to beat and we just have to do the best job we can."