Montagny deserves a place on the grid!

By role
May 21 2004

Pat Symonds, Renault Executive Director of Engineering, has praised the abilities of his third driver Franck Montagny. The French man has been testing for the Anglo French squad since the start of the season and has covered thousands of kilometers in both the R23B and the R24 cars.

On a Press Conference at the Monaco Grand Prix the engineer has put lots of praise in the young driver:

"I think Franck has done a very, very good job for us. I think he first impressed me when he did the 'Heathrow' (Friday) test session at Magny-Cours last year and pretty well everything that could go wrong went wrong. We had an engine problem on his car, we got things sorted out, got him out in the spare car which, of course, we could do in those sessions, it then started to rain and the way he handled it all, I thought, was very mature. Since then he has been doing a lot more testing for us, we find his results are consistent, he is quite innovative, he thinks a lot about what he does, he is an intelligent guy, and as a test driver we are very happy with him. As to his future, I think he thoroughly deserves a place in Formula One and I don't know if that will be with Renault or not. We obviously need to develop several drivers and at the end of the day there are only two that are racing for Renault. But I am very, very sure that Franck deserves a place somewhere on the grid." Symonds said when asked about Montagny.