Ducati has dominated the MotoGP seasons and has been the only factory to bring more innovations and brilliant evolutions to the competition, but it hasn’t always been like that, with Casey Stoner being one of those who lived through those not so prosperous times.
The Australian, who was the first to give a title to Ducati in the premier category of motorcycling in 2007, told Gazzetta dello Sport that it could have happened earlier: ‘Personally, I think Ducati could have had more success in earlier seasons’.
This led the former rider to recall Filippo Preziosi, a true “genius” as he considers him, going further and saying that it was a big mistake for Ducati to let him go: ‘When they let Filippo [Preziosi] go, it was their biggest mistake. And I have no respect for how that happened. This guy was very smart. In the years I was with him, no matter what bike we started the year with, we finished the year with it. We never received new parts during the season’.
And he explained how, at that time, things worked differently and with a much tighter budget: ‘Throughout the season, everyone else was updating and improving, and we had exactly the same package. So if we had a problem, we had to find a way to solve it with the bike we had, and that was always a challenge for me and my team’.
