Montagny happy with A1 debut

Franck Montagny

Franck Montagny added three points to the French team’s tally after finishing in eighth place in Sunday afternoon’s feature race. As expected, starting from 18th on the grid he did not manage to score in the sprint race, however he did get as high as 12th but lacked the time to move up further.

In the feature race Franck was up to 9th place in the first corner and he got past his closest rival Great Britain during the first round of refueling stops. Although he was much quicker than the cars in front of him passing them on the track proved impossible. The team tried to put back his second stop slightly to help him overtake in the pits. To no avail as he rejoined in 8th place where he stayed till the finish.

“Today’s two races helped me to accumulate experience in the car and it’s now much more to my liking. I did the maximum here but my aero set-up prevented me from overtaking some cars, which were slower than me over a lap," Franck said. “I spent the whole afternoon glued to a rival’s gearbox, and this meant that I wasn’t able to set competitive times: the car’s at least 0.4s quicker than our fastest lap today. Now, we’re going to concentrate on the next meeting. I don’t know the Brands Hatch circuit, but maybe that’s an advantage, as I won’t arrive with my F1 points of reference. It’ll be much easier to adapt my driving style right from the start to the very special characteristics of the A1GP car."