Australia’s two-time MotoGP world champion Casey Stoner begins his title defence in Qatar this weekend determined to show he is still the man to beat.

The 26-year-old has been in sparkling form in pre-season testing on his Honda, along with team-mate Dani Pedrosa, which has been all the more creditable as he and his wife Adrianna have just welcomed into the world their first child Alessandra.

The baby girl was born on February 16, the birth-date of Italian great Valentino Rossi, who will be hoping for a more positive season this year.

Stoner, who won the world crown in emphatic style last year for Honda after winning his first world title in 2007 with Ducati, shrugs aside the idea that a new born baby and all that entails will make him lose focus on the day job.

“They say you slow down when you get married, but in my first year of marriage I won the title,” said Stoner.

“When I found out we were having a baby I won it a second time. I don’t think that’s the case (that you slow down),” he said.

Stoner admitted that racing this season would be more of a challenge with the added worry of whether they had enough in the tank to finish the race.

“Of course, when you have more power there is a critical aspect involved: Obtaining the same performance with less fuel consumption,” he said.

Rossi will be looking towards a season to remember rather than the past two eminently forgettable ones which reached a nadir with the death of his close friend Marco Simoncelli at last year’s Malysian Grand Prix.

“We worked hard over the winter, and although we went the wrong direction at one point, we once again managed to find the good feeling with the GP12 that we’d had in the first test,” said Rossi, winner of 105 Grands Prix in all categories.