It’s been a while, but I return with good tidings.

Franck won his first ALMS race this weekend, taking the top stop of the podium with team mate James Rossiter. The win came after some good strategic calls from the team, some good decision making in the pit stops, and some good driving from Mr FKM.

The team waited until the minimum amount of time a driver has to be in the car (45 minutes) before calling Rossiter in and switching him up with Montagny, but because this was under yellow flags, they didn’t lose too much time.

After the second pit stop, in which Team AGR just put in some fuel, and left the tyres as they were, Franck emerged in the lead. He held off the competition, and took the chequered flag.

Despite not having won a race for many years, Franck seems decidedly understated about the victory:

I’m very happy for the XM Acura team. It’s a strong team with good drivers and everybody works very hard. This feels good to claim the top spot. I felt very confident coming into the race that we could have a good result. I’m quite happy.

Just quite happy. That’s all. Bless him. James gives a bit more insight into their success:

We put ourselves in the strongest position possible for the end of the race by making the driver change when we did. Franck did a great job in the car and the XM team did a great job on the strategy. It was a very challenging weekend. I only had 20 minutes of dry running before I started the race, so I really didn’t know the track very well. But, even last night, Franck and I were looking at maps to learn the circuit and trying to improve ourselves. The team gave us a great car and we just did the best we could.

Seems like everyone within the team did a good job, worked hard, and got the best result they could have hoped for. Well done Franck, and let’s hope it’s not so long until the next one.