Italian team Ducati and its young Australian rider Casey Stoner are both relative newcomers to motorcycling's top flight but it's them that everyone else fears at this weekend's China Grand Prix.
Ducati, in only its fifth season in MotoGP, commands the constructors championship while Stoner, in his second season in the top class, heads the riders' standings.
The 21-year-old Australian has already put his Ducati's raw power to good use in Qatar and Istanbul, where his victories were partly the result of his bike's superior straight line speed.
The Shanghai circuit where riders will be racing this weekend includes the longest straight in the entire championship circuit - a fact that Stoner's rivals are only too aware of.
"I'm hoping we've closed some of the speed gap with Ducati, otherwise they're going to have a clear advantage here," admitted Italian MotoGP ace Valentino Rossi.
Rossi, a seven-times world champ who rides for Yamaha, is currently second in the rider's standings.
For the first time in his top flight career he is seeing an Italian bike which can compete with the Japanese ones he has always ridden and which have dominated MotoGP since its launch.
Meanwhile, Stoner, whom some observers are already billing as successor to Australian legend Mick Doohan, is keeping his feet firmly on the ground as he negotiates his first season with Ducati.
He readily admits that his two wins and a fifth place so far in 2007 have been a surprise to him, even though he comes from a family of motorcyling fanatics who moved to Europe so he could chase his racing dream.
"The first race was like a dream come true. I didn't think it would get much better than that. Jerez was something of a reality check and I wasn't expecting to win in Turkey," he said before the China weekend got under way.
He dismissed as nonsense suggestions that he was favourite in Shanghai because his bike would be fast on the straights.
"I need to think about other parts of the circuit too, not just the straights," he said.
Asked in an online poll whether Stoner would still lead the riders' standings on Monday, a healthy majority of MotoGP fans said he would.
The youngster from Down Under has so far seemed a fairly shy star in the motorcycling world which is used to the extrovert antics of Valentino Rossi. After his win in Turkey, he just said thanks to his team and then disappeared.
He recently married 18-year-old Adriana Tuchyna, a fan who approached him at the Philip Island Grand Prix in 2003 and got him to sign his autograph on her stomach.
