Lorenzo: Winglets would have been banned right away if unsafe

During the first part of the 2016 season, Ducati was embroiled in a battle to try to stop the ban of these aerodynamics devices, which, in its case, were a key element in controlling the huge power of the Desmosedici.

In the end, the pressure from the other teams, who introduced winglets of their own, won the fight, and 2017 will be winglet-free - both for safety reasons, and to avoid an increase in the teams' budgets.

These two arguments, however, never convinced Ducati, which believes the ban was aimed simply at taking away one of its biggest strengths.

"If the winglets were really a worry for the organisers in terms of safety, they would have been banned in the second race of the year," Lorenzo told Motorsport.com.

"The Montmelo [Barcelona] circuit layout was changed 10 minutes after Luis Salom's tragic accident, so how were they going to allow us to race with the winglets if they were dangerous? 

"In my opinion, there was an influence from some manufacturers that played a part in the meetings," added the Spaniard, who is backed by team boss Paolo Ciabatti.

The Italian said: "When it comes to the winglets, we worked harder on the aerodynamic side than the rest, who had to work on that afterwards. They were banned based on non-existent safety concerns.

"There have been a lot of accidents this year and in none of them has a rider suffered a scratch [from the winglets]. It's clear that we had achieved a competitive advantage because we fitted them before everybody else, and they were banned to get rid of that advantage."

According to Ciabatti, the Italian squad's engineers have found a way to stop the front wheel from lifting under acceleration even without winglets.

"We were competitive with the winglets and we will be without them," he concluded.