MADRID -- Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong is capable of exceeding Miguel Indurain's record of five consecutive race victories, the Spaniard said on Monday.

But Indurain warned the 30-year-old, who won his fourth tour in a row at the weekend, not to relax if he wants to be able to savor yet another triumphant arrival in Paris.

"He will have to take it a year at a time," Indurain told Spanish sports daily ****Marca****. "It is true that he is still young and, therefore, in terms of age he could win two more. But staying at the top can be very exhausting. "In December he will have to start again from scratch and what he has done before counts for nothing. From then on everything has to work perfectly ... but looking at how he dominated this year it is clear that he can win more."

Indurain, who monopolized the tour between 1991 and 1995 when Armstrong was just starting out as a professional, said that even then the Texan showed he had the mental and physical strength to become a top cyclist, Reuters reported. "He was very good, but because he was young he was very inconsistent ... from the start he had something, he was very strong and very explosive. He even beat me to win the world championship in Norway when he was only 22."

The Spaniard, who retired from cycling at the age of 32, believes that Armstrong's experience of recovering from a near-fatal cancer helped provide him with the extra strength of character needed to win the toughest race in cycling.