The general manager of Ducati Corse, Gigi Dall’Igna, is seen as the key to the manufacturer’s current success in MotoGP and the Superbike World Championship. One of his predecessors was Filippo Preziosi, and under his leadership, Casey Stoner became world champion in 2007 in a very challenging context where Ducati was far from being the epitome of competitiveness and progress.
The former rider has criticized the manufacturer for the decision to part ways with the Italian engineer, stating to the newspaper La Gazzetta dello Sport: ‘Ducati would have been more successful in previous seasons than now. Their biggest mistake was letting go of Filippo Preziosi, and I have no respect for the way they did it. In the years I was with him, we never received any new parts during the season. We had exactly the same setup, so if we had a problem, we had to find a way to solve it with the bike we had. Mid-season, we would test the bike for the following year: in the initial tests, there were always improvements, and I wanted to compete with that bike for the rest of the season, knowing we were nearly half a second faster’.
While acknowledging Dall’Igna’s merit, Stoner emphasized that all progress took a long time and involved a very substantial investment: ‘Of course, Gigi Dall’Igna did a good job, but it took a long time and a large budget to get to where they are now’.