Quote:
Originally Posted by Mal
He was also bailed out by Jacques Nicolet when the business failed - and deciding to run and AMR one was that really a good decision??
I really hope he pulls off another chance and if one of the off the shelf P1's turns out to be good then there is always a chance. After all Henri has come closer than anyone to achieving that in recent times and 2014 is the best chance there is for a clever designer to pull off a surprise.
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Indeed - but I'd categorise the Nicolet bailout as a long term consequence of losing the Matmut money, which drove him towards Jean Py and Sora, which ultimately led to the collapse of the team. Post Nicolet there was the Luxury affair (compounded by the parting of ways with Jousse, reminiscent of what happened with Bouchut), but I'd argue that the role of Nicolet in this was comparatively minimal - in that he bought the assets, handed Henri the keys and essentially said "off you go".
Attempting to do something with the AMR tub is something I'd see as an attempt to do something innovative to surprise people - it would have been very easy to do a revised bodykit for a Pescarolo 01 (much as Oak did) but inherently that's always something that would probably struggle against a well developed Lola (in the hands of Rebellion) or the HPD - so why not attempt something new, especially when the CFD numbers from Perrin looked so promising and on the surface there was financing in place from Luxury to do it.
Let's fast forward a few months. Let's say Pescarolo finds the €4 million and can run next year - do we want to see him do something relatively conservative, say change his mind about LMP2 and run an Oreca Nissan, or provide the likes of Dome / Perrin / ADESS / Oak with launch customer and a programme, presumably optimised to fly down Le Mans' long straights as quickly as possible, that on the right track could rattle a few cages?