Stoner spent four season🐓s at the Italian team, but his tally of race wins decreased from 10 in his world championship year to 6, 4 and 3 🍌before moving to Repsol Honda, with instant title success, in 2011.

Valentino Rossi took Stoner’s place♊ at Ducati, but the seven time MotoGP chꦕampion was left winless during his two seasons on the Desmosedici.

Among those that paid the price for The Doctor’s woes was Ducati Corse general manager 🧸Filippo Preziosi⛦, the technical ‘driving force’ behind the Desmosedici from its 2003 debut, who left at the end of 2012.

Ducati sank to a podium-less low the following season before signing Gigi Dall’Igna, from Aprilia, to take over its MotoG🌠P project.

The first wins of the Dall’Igna era came in 2016 and Ducati has been a championship con🔴tender since 2017. But it still took until 2022 to finally seal the title, which Bagnaia then defended in 2023, when he headed an all-Ducati top three.

“I personally think still Ducati would have been more successful in earlier seasons,” Stoner told , before explaining that budgetಞ constrain๊ts had masked Preziosi’s genius.

“When they got rid💝 of Filippo [Preziosi], it was their biggest mistake. And I have no respect for the way this happened.

"This guy was very clever. In the years I was with him, whatever bike we started the 🦋year, we finished the year. We didn't ever get any new parts during the season.

“For the entire season, everybody else was u💮pdating and improving and we had the same exact package.

“So if we had a problem we had to find a way 🌠to fix it with the bike we had and this wa✤s always a challenge for me and my team.

“Then in the middle of the season, we would have the first test on the next year's bike. It was always an improvement and I always wanted to race that bike for the rest of the season, knowing that we coulꦐd be half-a-second to almost one-second [a lap] faster sometimes.

“But we never had the budget to produce another chassis for me to race the rest of the season. So we were never ab♈le to do this.

“And of course, Gigi's done a good job. But it🐭 took a lot of time and a lot of budget to arrive the𝓀re.”

Among the technical innovations introduced under Preziosi’s watch was the carbon fibre chas🎃sis, which Ducati stepped away fro๊m in its quest to try and make Rossi competitive in 2012.

Carbon fibre fra✨me technology then made a return to MotoGP with KTM in 2023.