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I suspect a short recap will be almost impossible; but here's an initial stab at it...
Perpetual... Pescarolo has never been an especially well funded team, especially after the loss of the Peugeot engine supply in 2003. This led to a fairly hand-to-mouth existence, even if we could safely say that what money there was was spent on what was worthwhile.
At the same time it's worth bearing in mind that Henri's never been that focused on the marketing aspect of his team, and the falling out with Soheil Ayari and more particularly the Bouchut affair in 2006 could be seen as leading to the loss of Matmut as a sponsor.
By the end of '07 Pescarolo Sport became Pescarolo Automobiles, with Jacques Nicolet taking a considerable stake in the team. At the end of 2008, with the economy rapidly going downhill Nicolet stepped his involvement back, and Sora Composites stepped in and purchased the Pescarolo race team for 1 Euro.
What exactly was involved in this transaction is still unclear in mind but either way it put Sora firmly in the driving seat. The Sora involvement did not involve funding the team, instead there was an idea that they would in some way support the search for new backers. Over the course of 2009 this didn't appear to happen, and around the time of Okayama I seem to remember there being some staff changes at Sora Racing which involved some of the people more involved in the racing side of the operation leaving the team.
Also in late 2009 the intellectual property rights to the Pescarolo 01 were sold to Oak Racing (so back to Jacques Nicolet). Henri himself appeared to have been marginalised at Sora (he didn't go to Okayama) and over the winter there were a lot of question marks over what was happening and there was something of a surprise when the two entries for Le Mans were taken up.
Py, the Sora owner, now appeared focused on selling the race team and being focused on building the racing school cars commissioned by the ACO. This led to the whole Genii sage, that has now come to a standstill. At some point Henri Pescarolo was dismissed by Py, and there may well still be court proceedings ongoing, probably meaning that comment on this directly is sub judice.
It would appear that Py has not wanted to directly run a race team - and from the start he was clear that he was not interested in funding it - hence, once the Genii deal fell through it was pretty much all over for the LMP1 Pescarolos at Le Mans.
Henri has said that the buildings and staff are there to run a sportscar campaign, but not at present the cars (which belong to Sora), the IP to build more (this belongs to Nicolet and Oak), or one assumes the budget.
I think we all hope that a regrouping can take place, and I'm sure we could speculate about how Nicolet could once again start to play more of a role, assuming that his financial position is now a bit more secure as Europe starts to move out of recession (subject obviously to what happens in Greece etc) but ultimately I think we can look at Pescarolo as being a victim of the recession's real long tail.
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