As we established, Franck was back in the car for Girondins de Bordeaux for the Brands Hatch weekend, although we still don’t know where or why he went away for round 6. Maybe he just needed a rest.

I didn’t get to see any of the action, apart from a few videos of the terrible crash for Chris van der Drift that overshadowed the entire day. It was an awful accident but he appears to have escaped with relatively minor injuries - a broken ankle and the like. Hope he recovers quickly.

So, on to the racing, then. Franck qualified 8th, which is a pretty good showing and an improvement on previous weekends. The higher position allowed him to tweak his strategy for the first race on Sunday, and as Autosport reports:

Buurman’s fourth place meant he lost the points lead back to Dolby by one point, while a late-stopping strategy paid off for Franck Montagny, who finished fifth for Bordeaux, ahead of Basel’s Max Wissel.

Finishing that high up meant a lot of lovely points, but a low start position for the second race thanks to the reverse grid. He couldn’t do much from that position, and the big accident cut short the race anyway, so 14th place was the best achievable.

Girondins now sit 10th in the championship with 258 points, way off the leaders, but hey, into the top ten!

The wonky Superleague calendar comes into play again, as there is now not a race until the beginning of September, when the gang will head to Italy. No point getting excited about it, as it is so far away, and also, who knows if FKM will be in the car!?