Montagny was born in Feurs in the Loire department of France. He started karting in 1988 and quickly demonstrated ability, winning the cadet class of the French Karting Championship in 1992 and following up with the National 1 class title the year after.
Montagny moved into cars in 1994 at the age of sixteen and immediately won the French Renault Campus championship. Two seasons in Formula Renault followed, producing a fourth-place finish in his first year — the highest-finishing rookie that season — before a fractured season in which multiple fractures from an accident at Le Mans caused him to miss half the year. He moved to French Formula Three in 1997 with the La Filière Martini team, finishing fourth in the championship in his debut year.
The 1998 French Formula Three season marked Montagny's emergence as a genuinely elite single-seater talent. He took pole position at the Spa-Francorchamps round ahead of drivers with considerably more experience, including Mark Webber, Luciano Burti, Enrique Bernoldi, and Peter Dumbreck. He then repeated the feat at the Zandvoort Masters in the Netherlands, beating that year's German Formula Three champion Nick Heidfeld. Over the season he accumulated ten wins from 22 races and twelve pole positions, finishing as championship runner-up behind David Saelens while consistently outpacing his long-time teammate Sébastien Bourdais.
Montagny joined the DAMS team in Formula 3000 for 1999 but the team was past its peak; one podium at the Hungaroring and ten championship points represented a modest return. He moved to the World Series by Nissan in 2001 with Epsilon by Graff and transformed his fortunes, winning eight of sixteen races to claim the championship ahead of Tomas Scheckter. He returned in 2003 with Gabord Competicion, won nine races, and secured a second championship title, this time ahead of Heikki Kovalainen.
The back-to-back World Series titles earned Montagny a test with Renault, where he impressed sufficiently to sign as a test driver from 2003, rising to third driver status in 2004 and 2005. In mid-2004 he took on an additional role as the chief test and development driver for the newly created GP2 Series, sharing early testing duties with Allan McNish before the championship officially launched in 2005. The quality of the GP2 car and its drivability were widely credited in part to Montagny's development work. In 2005 he made a one-off Friday appearance as third driver for Jordan at the European Grand Prix, clocking a faster time than Jordan's race drivers Narain Karthikeyan and Tiago Monteiro.
For 2006, Super Aguri signed Montagny as third driver. In May he was promoted to full race driver when Yuji Ide was demoted at the request of the governing body, which considered Ide insufficiently experienced. Montagny's Grand Prix debut came at the 2006 European Grand Prix on 7 May; he qualified last and retired with a hydraulics problem. He also retired from the Spanish Grand Prix on lap 10 despite a strong start that gained him three positions. At Monaco he completed all 78 laps, finishing sixteenth, three laps behind the race leader. In July Super Aguri announced that Sakon Yamamoto would replace him from the German Grand Prix onward.
During the mid-season break between the 2006 British and Canadian Grands Prix, Montagny participated in the Le Mans 24 Hours for Pescarolo Sport, finishing second behind the dominant Audi factory R10 cars. He was the first active Formula One driver to also compete at Le Mans in the same calendar year since Mark Blundell in 1995. At the 2008 24 Hours of Le Mans he drove the Peugeot 908 HDi FAP, finishing third alongside Ricardo Zonta and Christian Klien.
Montagny tested for Toyota F1 at Silverstone in September 2006, and Toyota confirmed him as test driver for 2007. He left the team after a test at the Circuit de Catalunya in November 2007. He was subsequently linked with a Renault race seat for 2010, but the team signed Vitaly Petrov instead.
Montagny competed in the final Champ Car World Series race at Long Beach on 20 April 2008, finishing second on his debut in American open-wheel racing, five seconds behind Will Power. He later made his IndyCar Series debut at the Indy Grand Prix of Sonoma in 2009 with Andretti Green Racing.
In May 2014, Andretti Autosport announced Montagny as one of their drivers for the inaugural 2014–15 FIA Formula E Championship. He raced in Beijing and Putrajaya, scoring a podium finish in Beijing and accumulating eighteen points across the two events. He was replaced in Punta del Este by Jean-Éric Vergne. It was later revealed that Montagny had tested positive for benzoylecgonine, a cocaine derivative, following the Putrajaya ePrix. In March 2015 he received a two-year ban from racing and was disqualified from the Putrajaya result.
After the conclusion of his active racing career, Montagny moved into broadcasting, working as a pit lane summariser and expert analyst for French television.
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