Stoner spent four seasons at the Italian team, but his tally of race wins decreased from 10 in his world championship year to 6, 4 and 3 before m🏅oving to Repsol Honda, with instant title success, in 2𒉰011.

Valentino Rossi took Stoner’s place at Duc🌟ati, but the seven time MotoGP champion 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 ꦯthe 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 Mot♍oGP project.

The first wins of the Dall’Igna era came in 2016 and Ducati has been a championship contender since 2017. But it still took until 2022 to finally seal the title, whic🤪h 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 budget༒ constraints had masked Preziosi’s geniu༺s.

“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 th꧑e year, we finished the year. We didn't ever get any new parts 💛during the season.

“For the entir🐓e📖 season, everybody else was updating and improving and we had the same exact package.

“So if we had a problem we had to f🎉ind a way to fix it with the bike we had and this was 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 could 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 able to do thi🐼s.

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

Among the technical innovations introduced under Prez♍iosi’s watch was the carbon fibre chassis, which Ducati stepped away from in its quest to try and make Rossi competitive in 2012.

Carbon fi✱bre frame technology then made a return to MotoGP with KTM in 2023.