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I'm hoping it's far too early to draw a line under Pescarolo prospects for 2010 and beyond, but there are probably a couple of areas where, historically, things could have gone better.
- Sponsor relations - l'affaire Bouchut by all accounts cost them Matmut support, and rapportage at the time indicated that this wasn't the only time sponsors hadn't been given the warm and fuzzy feeling they wanted
- No US thrust when customer cars became possible. As others have said, this is potentially the fastest private car out there, and Rollcentre's experience showed it could be highly competitive, but never having run in North America probably raised questions about the level of support available from the Technoparc, and limited the ability to build into a small customer programme which might have driven additional financial interest for Le Mans.
- Endless 'confrontation' with the ACO. Generally with a point, but ultimately it's got to have hacked them off and building a perception as "Mr Bad News" doesn't help sell Pescarolo as a commercial proposition to the sort of organisations that could pay his bills
- Relations with Peugeot. For all that I think Joest lost its soul after it became a works Porsche/Audi outfit, the burning of the bridges with Peugeot prior to the 908 era, and then unfortunate Treluyer/insurance incident probably didn't help.
Personally I hope the Del Bello rumours have more legs than the Mexican connection reported by Auto Hebdo - somehow Henri feels like he should do it in a quintessentially French way, rather than being a figure backing an effort with a very different identity. Put a different way, we all remember Henri as a driver with Matra, to a lesser extent with Porsche or Sauber Mercedes, but as a Lancia works driver? Not really.
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