Today, 21 June 2025, marks two years since Diagonal Comms was founded by Matt Bishop, the former Aston Martin and McLaren Formula 1 communications chief. Having encountered numerous comms & PR agencies throughout his tenure in the F1 paddock, Matt spotted an opportunity – to build an all-encompassing, one-stop-shop, turn-key comms/PR, digital marketing, and content creation solution. Thus, with that vision, peerless expertise, in-depth knowledge, and passion for the motorsport industry at its heart, Diagonal Comms was born.
Two years later, Diagonal has gone from strength to strength. We have worked for tens of clients throughout the motorsport and automotive realms and together, with a growing team, have taken the agency to new heights. Here are some of our best bits so far…
One of the first major clients we acquired was the British Touring Car Championship (BTCC), the UK’s premier motorsport series, which we began work with less than seven months after our formation. We continue to serve the BTCC today with a comprehensive comms/PR, digital marketing, and content creation package – in fact, several members of our team are at Oulton Park today for the fifth weekend of the season. We have guided the BTCC into a new era of modernity, maximising the social media age to the championship’s benefit and transforming its output into a diverse and engaging offering.
Key pillars of our work have included oversight of the series becoming available to watch globally for the first time in its history thanks to a groundbreaking TikTok deal in 2024, and strategic utilisation of YouTube in 2025. We also provided the BTCC with a bespoke comms strategy after it became the first championship in the UK to introduce 100% sustainable fuel in all of its cars, and devised diversity, equity, and inclusion-focused activations with the likes of the Renaissance Foundation who we took behind-the-scenes at Brands Hatch during last year’s season finale.
Fast forward to shortly after our first birthday, in August 2024, when we had the pleasure of working with Prodrive – the world-leading motorsport and advanced technology business – to help promote its 40th anniversary (they are just a little bit older than us!). Prodrive, which is headed by David Richards, has become a legendary name in the world of motorsport since it was founded in 1984. Nowadays, it is also a key player in high-tech engineering in the automotive, aerospace, marine, and defence sectors.
It was a highlight of our story so far to help celebrate Prodrive’s incredible history, and the dedication and expertise of its 550 employees. Our comprehensive comms/PR, and digital marketing package included the production of a special three-part documentary, bespoke social media posts, and a variety of earned media coverage across print and broadcast outlets.
Back at the track, we had the chance to spend a race weekend with one of the hottest talents in the junior single-seater racing scene, Deagen Fairclough, at the end of the 2024 season. We were on the ground at Brands Hatch during the British F4 finale for Deagen’s primary sponsor, ROKiT, who set the teenage hotshot’s single-seater career in motion at the end of 2022, when they awarded him a fully-funded British F4 seat for winning the groundbreaking ROKiT Racing Star sim-racing competition. We secured Deagen – who was coming to the end of a record-breaking season in which he was crowned British F4 champion four races early – a host of mainstream media placements, along with a mini documentary which we filmed and edited in-house.
However, that was not the first time that Diagonal had been active in the thriving junior single-seater racing world, as we worked with Australian racing driver Patrick Heuzenroeder in the GB3 Championship, the UK’s premier single-seater series, throughout 2024.
Our team operated a comprehensive comms/PR and content creation package for ‘The Racing Kelpie’ across races in the UK and Continental Europe, raising his profile via social media, race weekend videography and photography, graphic design, and regular media days. Our work also featured the fostering of a relationship with Hard Rock Cocktails, culminating in Patrick running an eye-catching Miami blue livery and Diagonal devising a first-of-its-kind event with the brand at Circuit Zandvoort to mark the beginning of their collaboration with Patrick.
Switching gears to the virtual world, we worked with Asetek SimSports, the world-leading sim-racing hardware manufacturer based in Denmark, throughout 2024 to raise their brand awareness, boost sales, and expand their reach. With state-of-the-art direct drive wheelbases, hydraulic pedals, and authentic rims, Asetek can make it feel like you are on track in your own home. The company’s products are inspired by the experience of its Founder and CEO, André Eriksen, a former racer in his own right, and his son, Valdemar, a multiple race-winner who has achieved podium finishes in all the series he has raced in, from karting to F4, F3, GT3, and Le Mans prototypes.
A joined-up campaign of mainstream media interviews, op-eds, and social media posts positioned André as a thought leader, established a consistent tone of voice, and outlined the expertise in, experience of, and passion for racing that goes into every Asetek product.
As part of this strategy, we organised a media lunch at London’s glamorous Royal Automobile Club (RAC). André hosted alongside special guest Deagen Fairclough, who, as a figure known throughout motorsport for the success that he transferred from the virtual world to reality, hosted a sim-racing masterclass using Asetek’s gear. With both André and Deagen available for interview, the event resulted in a swathe of media coverage and teed up the launch of a new product, the Invicta Wheel, about which we organised media placements in at Gamescom – Europe’s largest trade show for the gaming industry – to great success shortly afterwards.
However, our work hasn’t all been focused around four wheels. We led the comms/PR effort for the launch campaign of Buffalo Trace, the celebrated Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey, who, with our assistance, unveiled former Haas Formula 1 Team Principal Guenther Steiner as a brand ambassador at their new distillery in Covent Garden, London. The enigmatic Italian, who became an especially popular figure following the release of Netflix’s fly-on-the-wall Formula 1 docuseries Drive to Survive, was harnessed as the embodiment of Buffalo Trace’s ‘perfectly untamed’ brand.
We managed all media elements of the activation, from its announcement, to on-site photography and videography, a live Q&A hosted by Diagonal chief Matt Bishop, and mainstream media interviews with Guenther. With the bourbon flowing and canapés going down very well, our evening in the capital was a big hit and landed Buffalo Trace significant media coverage.
As the end of our first full year in operation approached, we were honoured to be appointed by Tom Hartley Jnr – one of the world’s most respected and exclusive high-end dealers in classic and historic sports cars and racing cars – to instigate a comms/PR strategy for the sale of former F1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone’s jaw-dropping collection of 69 race and championship-winning Grand Prix and F1 cars. The lineup was stunning and featured examples of legendary machinery that spanned more than 70 years of F1 history, including the championship-winning Ferrari F2002 driven by Michael Schumacher and Rubens Barrichello, the 1951 Ferrari 375 F1 chassis that won the 1951 Italian Grand Prix in the hands of the great Alberto Ascari, and the legendary Brabham BT46B ‘fan car’ that won the only Formula 1 Grand Prix in which it was entered.
We collaborated closely with Tom Hartley Jnr and his team to craft a comms/PR plan that included the creation and distribution of a press release and a proactive approach to media liaison utilising our blackbook of international motorsport contacts. The announcement attracted widespread media coverage in leading online, print, and broadcast media outlets across news, sport, business, consumer, and lifestyle genres. The cherry on top? The collection has now been sold!
One of the highlights of 2025 so far has been working with the burgeoning Cadillac Formula 1 Team, which we brought onto our client roster in March after it received final approval from the FIA and Formula One Management to join the F1 grid in 2026 as the 11th team. More than two years after the FIA’s call for expressions of interest to join the F1 grid in February 2023, approval of the General Motors and TWG-backed Cadillac Formula 1 Team’s entry was the most significant piece of news to hit the F1 world since Lewis Hamilton announced his shock move from Mercedes to Ferrari at the beginning of 2024, and we are proud to be playing a part in its journey to the grid in Melbourne, Australia, next year.
Our team has provided the American outfit with strategic comms/PR support throughout the first phase of its journey – from the first press conference with Team Principal Graeme Lowdon in response to the FIA and Formula One Management’s official approval of the team’s entry, to leading the media outreach for its star-studded launch event at the Miami Grand Prix last month, and managing the announcement of its partnership with fellow American icon, Tommy Hilfiger.
We would like to take this opportunity to express our deepest gratitude to all of our clients over the past two years. Thank you! Exciting times are certainly on the horizon at Diagonal as we continue to grow, mature, and bring new clients aboard. Here’s to the next two years, and beyond…