Franck
Montagny

Franck Montagny was born on 5 January 1978 in Feurs, where he began karting in 1988. He won the cadet class of the French Karting Championship in 1992 and the National 1 class a year later. In 1994, aged sixteen, he moved into cars and won the French Renault Campus title at the first attempt. Two years of Formula Renault followed, and in 1997 he stepped up to French Formula Three. In 1998 he won ten of 22 races in Formula Three and finished runner-up to David Saelens. In Formula 3000 he took tenth place for DAMS in 1999, with a podium at the Hungaroring. In the World Series by Nissan he became champion in 2001 with Epsilon by Graff, finished second behind Ricardo Zonta in 2002 and won a second title in 2003 with Gabord Competicion, taking nine victories.

These results earned him a place as a Renault test driver in 2003. He was the team's third driver in 2004 and 2005. At the 2005 European Grand Prix he made a one-off Friday appearance for Jordan and set a quicker time than regular drivers Narain Karthikeyan and Tiago Monteiro. From mid-2004 he was also the test and development driver for the new GP2 Series.

Super Aguri signed him as third driver for 2006. He was promoted to the race team in May, after Yuji Ide was moved back into a testing role. He made his debut at the European Grand Prix on 7 May, qualifying last and retiring with a hydraulics problem. He also retired in Spain, and in Monaco he finished sixteenth, three laps behind the winner. Between the British and Canadian Grands Prix he finished second in the Le Mans 24 Hours with Pescarolo. From the German Grand Prix onwards Super Aguri replaced him with Sakon Yamamoto, though he returned as third driver in Turkey. He made seven starts and ended the championship in 27th place.

In 2007 he was a Toyota test driver. In 2008 he finished second in the final Champ Car race at Long Beach and took third place at Le Mans in a Peugeot 908 alongside Ricardo Zonta and Christian Klien. He made his IndyCar Series debut at Sonoma in 2009, and for 2010 he signed with Girondins de Bordeaux in Superleague Formula. In the inaugural Formula E season of 2014-15 he raced for Andretti and scored a podium in Beijing.

Source: Wikipedia, “Franck Montagny”. Text licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.