Diagonal Diary: Murray’s iconic commentary, Silverstone tunnels and comms/PR menus
Monday 16 September:
Kicking off proceedings at Diagonal Comms this week is the production of a variety of race week-themed content for our client, the British Touring Car Championship. The series’ penultimate round of 2024 will take place this weekend (21-22 September) at the home of the British Grand Prix, Silverstone, on the National layout, and the fight for title glory is truly heating up.
Jake Hill, Tom Ingram, Ash Sutton, Colin Turkington, Dan Cammish and Josh Cook are all in contention to claim the championship crown, and they are separated by only 50 points with 137 still on offer; it really is anyone’s game!
Our weekend preview press release is published to keep audiences up-to-date with what’s coming this weekend, but we also reminisce on an iconic piece of BTCC history. Why don’t you rewind the clock to 1992 and take a trip down memory lane with Steve Soper, John Cleland and that piece of commentary from Murray Walker?
Tuesday 17 September:
Matt Bishop’s latest column for Motorsport Magazine is published. He takes a look back at the 2021 Azerbaijan Grand Prix, which is often remembered for its implications on that year’s gloves-off championship fight between Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen.
However, the race carried particular importance for Aston Martin, whom Matt was chief of communications for, as Sebastian Vettel capitalised on a typically chaotic contest on the streets of Baku to claim the team’s first podium and, coincidentally, his last in Formula 1. Matt recalls the events of the Grand Prix with a focus on Lawrence Stroll, who had an emotional day in Azerbaijan for different reasons.
Back in our City of London offices, work continues for the BTCC as it enters one of its busiest periods of the year. With just one weekend between event nine at Silverstone and the season finale at Brands Hatch, our team is flat-out producing and planning content to maximise one of the series’ closest title fights in years. In conjunction, the BTCC announces that it will further raise sustainability awareness at Silverstone this weekend, and we continue to iron out the details for a charitable activation with the BTCC, which brings our day to a close on a rather uplifting note.
Wednesday 18 September:
Wednesday begins with one of our regular team-wide meetings. We discuss our current and prospective client roster, the status of our ongoing projects and how we can continue overdelivering for our clients.
Following our call, we begin gathering media contacts to organise interviews with Caitlin Wood. The Australian racing driver is currently competing in the Indian Racing League with Bangalore Speedsters, having spent the majority of 2024 racing in the Porsche Sprint Challenge Great Britain, and will be back on track at Kari Motor Speedway in October.
Off the back of a productive call with our client Asetek SimSports last week, which led our team to begin engaging with a variety of mainstream gaming media outlets, we continue building a top-line comms/PR plan for the Danish sim racing hardware manufacturer. They have an exciting calendar over the coming months and we are working hard to ensure we broadcast their activities to the widest audience possible.
Wednesday ends with the completion of our bid to win a prestigious motorsport media award, which we have been refining in recent weeks. All that’s left is to press ‘submit’…
Thursday 19 September:
Our day is filled, in large, by work for Patrick Heuzenroeder, the 18-year-old Australian racing driver currently competing in the GB3 Championship. It has been almost two weeks since the penultimate round of the season took place at Donington Park, which means the countdown to the end of the year is truly on; the GB3 finale will take place at Brands Hatch in just over a week’s time (September 28-29). We are busy editing videos for Pat’s YouTube channel and adapting short-form equivalents that are optimised for platforms such as Instagram, TikTok and YouTube Shorts. Our content focuses on reviewing Round 7 at Donington Park and looking ahead to the last event of the season, all of which will be published in the new week.
The afternoon is dominated by online meetings, one with a prospective client that currently competes in multiple series across the globe, whom we touched on in last week’s Diagonal Diary. Having had a successful introduction, we get to work with building the foundations of a ‘menu’ of our comprehensive PR/comms package.
Friday 20 September:
With on-track action for the penultimate event of the BTCC season just around the corner, our dedicated media team arrives in force at Silverstone.
We have a busy day planned with a ‘contenders shoot’, which features all six of the championship prospects, dominating our day. Whilst the BTCC’s star drivers might be in touching distance of the title, that doesn’t mean they can escape their media commitments, and we ensure that we have gathered the content we need to promote the season finale over the coming weeks.
Our team sets up a studio at Silverstone, but we also take a couple of light panels and a camera to the tunnel that connects the national paddock and Copse corner… Why is that, we hear you ask? “You wouldn’t get it.”
ITV4’s all-day BTCC race day broadcast will get underway at 10:45 BST on Sunday. And remember, for the first time in the championship’s history, the BTCC is being broadcast globally as every race is streamed live via ITV Sport’s TikTok channel.