World Champion Cadel Evans expects seven-time Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong to be a big threat next year. The Australian believes that the Texan, third in this year’s Tour de France, will be even stronger following his comeback year.

“He’s going to be bigger and more dangerous than in 2009 — we’ll see Armstrong at another level in 2010,” Evans said while on a promotional tour in Australia.

The Australian, who recently made the move to America’s BMC Racing pro-continental team, still hopes to win the Tour de France, despite his team not being guaranteed an automatic invitation.

“BMC, they’re not a big team now, but they’re growing — for me, to join a team as they are growing is an interesting project,” he said. “They have everything in place to be a very good team and that’s really what I’m looking for, the core values and philosophies.

“Maybe I will miss out on the Tour, but we have all the capabilities to prove we deserve a place.”

BMC will be counting on former World Champion Alessandro Ballan to book some strong results in the cobbled classics with American national champion George Hincapie at his side. When the roads start tilting upwards in the famous Ardennes Classics it will be up to Dutchman Karsten Kroon and Evans to show why they deserve an invitation to the Tour.