Aston Martin, among the first to commit to the new hypercar class of the World Endurance Championship last year, has put its entry on hold out while it reassesses the much-hyped new racing category. Among big car companies, only Aston, Toyota and Peugeot had committed to the class.
Aston Martin isn’t going to race the Valkyrie in the Le Mans hypercar class
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The shock news means we will not now see a race version of the Valkyrie hypercar debut at Silverstone in six months’ time, or compete in what was going to be a highlight for many: a hypercar showdown at the Le Mans 24 Hours in 2021. That would have been Aston's first bid for outright Le Mans 24 Hours honours for 10 years.
“Aston Martin’s ambition to compete for the overall victory in the 24 Hours of Le Mans remains undiminished,” said Aston Martin Lagonda CEO Andy Palmer.
“But it is only right that we reassess our position in light of a significant change in the landscape that was not anticipated when we committed last year. We entered Aston Martin Valkyrie in WEC and at Le Mans with the understanding that we would be competing with similar machinery and like-minded manufacturers. The situation has changed.”
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McLaren, Ferrari and Porsche have all held back from committing to the hypercar class, giving smaller outfits such as ByKolles and Glickenhaus their biggest ever chance of success.
President of Aston Martin Racing, David King, said: “With such momentous change taking place in sportscar racing, the decision to pause our entry into the WEC Hypercar class gives us the time and breathing space to calmly assess the status of the top level of the sport, and our place within it.”
The news comes just one day after Aston let its Red Bull Racing aces Max Verstappen and Alex Albon loose for the first time at Silverstone in prototype versions of the Valkyrie, the car conceived by F1 design guru Adrian Newey to match an LMP1 car for outright pace. In an ironic twist given later news, Albon said of the road-legal car: “It really feels like a racing car. I just need to get my hands on one!”
With Aston’s postponement of its hypercar race plans it is unlikely he will be able to do that any time soon, though the project to build 150 road/track customer Valkyries at circa £2m each is unaffected by the news.
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Also unaffected is Aston’s commitment to sportscar racing with the Vantage GTE and the company’s plan to re-enter Formula 1 next year when the Racing Point F1 team becomes Aston Martin F1, the brand’s first F1 works team since 1960.
King added: “Competing against our closest rivals on the road in GT racing makes perfect sense. Vantage is winning in some of the most fiercely contested sportscar classes in global motorsport, and long may this continue.”
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We may not be seeing the astonishing Valkyrie race in anger then but we can enjoy the next best thing… seeing Max Verstappen and Alex Albon, along with Aston GTE drivers Darren Turner and Alex Lynn, have their first taste of the Valkyrie, with its electrified KERS-style V12 powertrain boasting a total of 1,160bhp, in the video that Aston put out of the Silverstone shakedown testing earlier this week .
Verstappen said after driving the car: “To be one of the first guys to drive an insane car like this was really exciting. It’s still in the development phase but you can already feel the pace, which compared to a normal car is… pretty different! its levels of downforce are incredible, and it looks super aggressive. It was a lot of fun out there.”
It would be good to see Max, or Alex or Darren, racing in it for real…
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