Aston Martin has formally confirmed that it has revived its previously-shelved Valkyrie Hypercar programme. At least one Valkyrie, entered by Aston Martin as a factory, will compete in the FIA WEC and IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship from 2025 onwards.
By choosing to enter IMSA’s GTP category as well as the FIA WEC, Aston Martin becomes the first manufacturer to commit an LMH-spec car to both championships.
This revitalised programme, which DSC first revealed back in June, is set to receive support and backing of Aston Martin’s championship-winning endurance racing partner Heart of Racing, which currently competes in the GT ranks of both the WEC and IMSA with Aston Martin.
“Performance is the lifeblood of everything that we do at Aston Martin, and motorsport is the ultimate expression of this pursuit of excellence,” said Lawrence Stroll, the executive chairman of Aston Martin Lagonda.
“We have been present at Le Mans since the earliest days, and through those glorious endeavours we succeeded in winning Le Mans in 1959 and our class 19 times over the past 95 years. Now we return to the scene of those first triumphs aiming to write new history with a racing prototype inspired by the fastest production car Aston Martin has ever built.
“In addition to our presence in the FIA Formula 1 World Championship, Aston Martin’s return to the pinnacle of endurance racing will allow us to build a deeper connection with our customers and community, many of whom found their passion for the brand through our past success at Le Mans. And of course, the complex knowledge-base we are building through our F1 team is data that Aston Martin Performance Technologies can harness to further enhance the capabilities of the Valkyrie race car at Le Mans, in WEC and IMSA.
“Just as the learnings we gain through endurance competition will feed directly into our road car programmes, further improving the ultimate performance of our products. I would like to thank Gabe Newell and Heart of Racing for partnering with Aston Martin on this programme, and I look forward to working with him and the team as we aim for success in the greatest endurance race of them all.”
To ready the car for competition, work at the AMR Technology Campus, which is co-located with the Aston Martin Formula One team’s Silverstone headquarters, is already underway, and has been for several months. Staff are taking on the task of developing a competition prototype version of Valkyrie for racing.
The car is set to begin track testing in early 2024 ahead of homologation planned for autumn next year – The planned race debut for the car is the 205 Rolex 24 at Daytona.
To enable it to compete against other LMH and LMDh cars around the world, the Valkyrie must fit within the pre-defined aerodynamic and power performance window in the regulations.
The race-optimised carbon-fibre chassis Valkyrie will use a modified version of the Cosworth-built 6.5-litre naturally aspirated V12 engine, which in standard form revs to 11,000rpm and develops over 1000bhp.
The power unit will be enhanced further to incorporate the critical Balance of Performance requirements of the Hypercar class, and developed to withstand the rigours of top-level long-distance competition. It is set to be a significantly different unit from the original power unit planned when the programme was originally revealed back in 2019.
As with the Valkyrie AMR Pro track-car, the battery-electric hybrid system that features on the road-specification Valkyrie is absent from the race car. This move means Aston Martin is set to be the only major OEM competing in Hypercar and GTP with a non-hybrid prototype. It will also be the only OEM competing with a race car based on an existing production car.
Once homologated, the Heart of Racing team will spearhead Aston Martin’s programmes in both WEC and IMSA.
Founded in 2014 by American businessman and philanthropist Gabe Newell, The Heart of Racing is a charity that raises money for the Seattle Children’s Cardiology Research Fund (among other worthy causes). The US-based HoR team was conceived in 2020 and has partnered with Aston Martin since its inception, competing predominantly with the Vantage GT3 in IMSA’s two GTD classes.
Having brought Aston Martin its first IMSA GTD class championship title with AMR Academy graduate Roman De Angelis in 2022, HoR recorded the brand’s maiden class victory in January’s Rolex 24 with team principal Ian James, Darren Turner and two-time WEC GT champion Marco Sørensen also driving. HoR also made its 24 Hours of Le Mans debut with the Aston Martin Vantage GTE in June this year, finishing seventh, and is set to compete in the final race for contemporary GTE cars worldwide at Bahrain in November.
“It’s a privilege to be able to bring Aston Martin back to the top of endurance racing with the Heart of Racing,” added Ian James, the team principal of Heart of Racing.
“Our team has grown exponentially since we began racing with those famous wings at Daytona in 2020. We understand and are aligned with the ethos of the brand and we have developed our own systems and technologies to extract the maximum performance of the cars we compete with. Our understanding of Valkyrie is strong and we have worked closely with it through our customer activation programmes for two years now.
“This HoR team has big ambitions in endurance racing and this is absolutely the right time for us to step into the top classes of WEC and IMSA and challenge for overall honours. This is not an easy target, but between our partners and the support of Aston Martin Performance Technologies, it is one we have all the tools and capabilities in place to hit the bullseye with.”
In addition to the announcement today that Aston Martin will return to the top class of international sportscar racing with the Valkyrie, it also confirmed its plans for GT racing going forward. From 2025, Aston Martin will have a significant presence in Formula One, Hypercar, GT3 and GT4 competition.
“Today marks the beginning of a new chapter for Aston Martin in endurance racing. As a manufacturer, Aston Martin has a consistent record of success at world championship level and, through the efforts of the Heart of Racing, also now in IMSA,” concluded Adam Carter, Aston Martin’s new head of endurance motorsport, who has a CV that includes senior positions at Williams Racing, Wirth Research and with the Renault, Jordan, McLaren and Arrows Formula One teams.
“Valkyrie takes us back into the top tier of sportscar racing and, together with our partners we are absolutely confident that we can deliver a race car with the potential and the performance capabilities to fight alongside the benchmark machinery in the class. To be able to do this in cooperation with a proven championship-winning operation such as Heart of Racing ensures we have all we need to race from a competitive platform.
“It’s a fascinating programme, given that this is the only hypercar in the class with direct synergies to its road car counterpart, but the Valkyrie concept was always intended to break through boundaries, and now we have the opportunity to show what it can do on a track.”
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