12/07/2006
NEWS STORY
Writing on his own website, Franck Montagny has confirmed that he will partner Takuma Sato in this weekend's French Grand Prix at Magny Cours, his last race outing of the season.
"It has happened," declares the Frenchman, "I know that this will be my last race with Super Aguri but how happy am I that I can race at my home Grand Prix!
"I am super happy, fully recharged and in better form than ever," he continues, "I have fans who will come to support me, this is the dream. Well, almost as the dream would be that I was able to fight for victory, but that is too big...
"If I did not tell you this earlier it was because I didn't know what was going on myself until very recently," he admits. "We had discussed this a lot with the members of Super Aguri and I owe them a huge thank you, because they quite simply decided that I will race at Magny-Cours, which frankly was not foreseen and from Hockenheim onwards I will be certainly the 3rd driver.
"For the moment, I will be at the circuit on Wednesday evening, settling in for the weekend, having discussions with the engineers and starting things off again because after the last race at Indy I was rather disillusioned. I was upset enough by the fact that it was going to be my last official GP, but that it finished so quickly and so badly made it worse. I had been racing for 6 weeks non stop and I was a little weary and that insane weekend over there did not help my communication with the team very much."
The Japanese team is due to introduce its own car at Hockenheim, and Montagny's admission that this will be his last race drive for Super Aguri appears to indicate that Sakon Yamamoto will make his race debut.
In six outings thus far, Montagny, who was brought in to replace Yuji Ide after the Japanese driver's superlicence was revoked, has finished twice, having suffered three retirements and one crash (Indianapolis).