Hello and welcome along to the live watch along of the Franklin reveal. Whether you’re watching along at home, or can’t watch along, we’ll keep you updated throughout. - Franklin looks to have started this season off with a statement. The reveal this year seemed to be far more flashy than in previous years, having hired the O2 arena as a venue for fans to watch live, similar to WWE’s thunderdome, with some watching along appearing on screens around the arena, from the comfort of their own home. - As the lights come on, and the ‘show’ starts, the much anticipated Franklin JF-09 lay dormant underneath a large silk blanket, with the likes of Jamie Franklin and Felicia Quinn standing beside the sleeping car. - Team Principal and owner of the team, Jamie Franklin starts us off. “Hello to everyone watching and thank you for joining us as we kick off 2021 in style. 2019 was a difficult year for us. Yes, I meant to say 2019, I’ll get to 2020 in a minute. That year saw a return to form for us in many ways, fighting for wins, and fighting for the Championship as we believe we should have been through the years of 2016-2018, but that doesn’t mean that it was an easy year. Early on we knew we would have financial issues with many of our sponsors looking to leave the team, which quickly turned into a mass exodus it seemed. With everything going on, both personally and professionally, I took the decision that the team would leave the sport at the end of the year. As we all know now, that decision didn’t really stick, and here we are over a year later looking to compete in our ninth year. But that decision did have ramifications,” “We saw lots of comments over the course of last year as to why we’d fallen down the order so much, why couldn’t we just return to our 2019 car as it was likely a lot faster, and those are fair comments. On balance, the JF-07 was a faster car than the JF-08, and it would have served us much better over the course of last year than what we had. However, by the time we had decided to compete in the 2020 season, just a couple of days before testing was scheduled to start, we realised that whilst the rules were largely the same, all of the teams around us had been spending a lot of their time and resources on evolutions to their cars, so it was likely that to truly compete, we’d have been spending our time and money on playing catch up. Not only that, Honda as well was going to leave the sport and thus had not been continuing development of their engine,” “So, given this, we looked at 2021 and the regulation changes. We realised that we could start from scratch and use 2020 as a platform to build from, a foundation to learn and build our knowledge for this upcoming season. By now, we all know how it went and it was by far our most unsuccessful season on the face of it, but behind the scenes we were setting in motion a plan to put ourselves back where we believe we should be, which brings us to the here and now, and the car underneath this blanket,” “But...before we get to that, I want to introduce our driver line-up for 2021. Firstly, we have the Aussie who impressed everyone last season with his raw speed, his determination and his wit - Nick Addison!” - After that lengthy introduction, the lights have dimmed once more, and yes...it seems Nick Addison has his very own theme music as he makes his way into the arena, playing up to the virtual crowd the way you’d expect him to! I have to say, headband wrapped around his head aside, he looks like he means business! “Wooooo! Good to be here guys! I’m not going to give you guys a really long speech about what things have been like for me, or what it has taken for us to get here, no offense, Jamie, the speech was great. But what I am going to tell you is that I am so ready for this season. I am laser focused and I am ready to kick some ass, so let’s get this season going!” - Addison has always been a bit of a character, but clearly he’s either really pumped as he says, or he’s high on sugar or something, because he’s now doing a lap of the arena as if he’s high fiving all of the fans. “Okay then! As we wait for Nick to come back, let’s bring in our new driver for this year - Danilo Forini!” - Having seen Forini in other categories, he’s always been quite a smiley character, but this definitely looks like a different side to him. Whether it’s the atmosphere, the music or the lighting, we don’t know, but he looks serious. “Hey everyone. I think I’m going to take a leaf out of Nick’s book for this one. For us, the time for talking is over. We have a job to do on track, and I’m going to show everyone why I belong here,” - That looked like it could have been a mic drop moment, had he not passed it back to Jamie. - Nick looks like he’s finished with his lap of the arena now as well, took him awhile to make it all the way around, that’s definitely some dedication right there. “We’re absolutely thrilled with our driver line up this year. We all know the talent that we’ve had at this team in the past, but you can really feel the hunger emanating from these two, and that spreads throughout the team. There is a real unified energy in the factory at the moment, and that has really carried us through to the point we’re at now, and I know I speak for everyone when I say that we’re all chomping at the bit to get this beast out on the track. Which brings me to why we’re here, which is to reveal our competitor for the 2021 season,” - Nick seems to have calmed down a little now, as he and Danilo each take a corner of the sheet covering the car...and everything seems to have gone dark...
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