The Aston Martin Valkyrie will race at Le Mans in 2025 | GRR
Aston Martin has revealed that the plan to race the Valkyrie at Le Mans is back on, with development of a prototype very close in relation to the AMR Pro track-only special now in full swing. The car will make its racing debut in 2025, fielded by well-known American Aston Martin racers, Heart of Racing.
This will of course make the Valkyrie the first road-inspired car to take part in the Le Mans Hypercar class, and the first road-based car to challenge for victory since the early days of GT1. If it wins, it’ll be the first V12-engined road-based car to do so for 30 years, since the McLaren F1 in 1995.
The Valkyrie is also set to be the first LMH car to take part in the IMSA Weathertech SportsCar Championship. Yes, HoR are taking the Valkyrie across the pond to compete at Daytona, Sebring and beyond.
The marque has also announced that it will be reinvigorating its GT racing involvement, with all-new Vantage LMGT3 and GT4 cars for the 2024 season. All in, this will make Aston Martin the only manufacturer present in all forms of global endurance racing – from GT4 to Hypercar – in addition to Formula 1, in 2025.
“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,” said Aston Martin Chairman, Lawrence Stroll.
“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.”
Aston Martin Valkyrie Le Mans challenger – all V12, no hybrid
Development of the Valkyrie LMH car will be carried out by Aston Martin Performance Technologies, the newly-minted outfit based next to Aston Martin’s F1 Team in Silverstone. Only the other day the marque revealed how AMPT were assisting with the development of the Valhalla hybrid hypercar.
As for the car itself, there’s not a whole lot of new information. The rendering we see literally is a liveried-up AMR Pro, with somewhat tempered front and rear aero. The car is sure to be developed further from here.
Aston claims the Valkyrie AMR Pro was developed from the beginning to ‘meet LMH hypercar regulations’, meaning that the AMR – with its lengthened wheelbase compared to the road car – will serve as the basis of the hypercar, not just the car in these renders. Obviously, along with the engine, the aerodynamics will need to be optimised for both performance, race-ability (easy disassembly and repair in the heat of battle) and compliance.
Aston Martin has revealed that the car will not be a hybrid. This means that the Valkyrie in both LMH and GTP form will not have their V12s augmented with battery power as they are in the road car. Instead, the 6.5-litre Cosworth-developed unit is set to go through an extensive re-development programme, to both bring it down to the mandated 680PS (500kW) maximum system output for Hypercar and ensure it’ll be able to withstand the rigours of flat-out long-distance running.
It’s Cosworth doing the work too, with the engine needing a lot of new hardware internally for it to produce the mandated numbers (there are limits on continuous torque delivery for Hypercars, too) and reliability.
“A lot of the work we’ll be doing is tempering back the AMR Pro for competition, – the power and the downforce” Aston Martin’s new head of Endurance Racing, Adam Carter told us.
“You’ll definitely see synergies with the AMR Pro. The underlying look will be maintained, but it’s quite the task to tune down the AMR Pro and optimise the body’s race- and servicability.”
Development is ongoing and has been for many months, with the first track tests set to begin in early 2024. Homologation is set for the end of 2024, before the car races for the first time at the 2025 Daytona 24 Hours.
Reviving the Valkyrie LMH programme
It’s not been an easy road to get here. The Valkyrie was always intended to get a spot on endurance grids, with Aston announcing plans to race it as far back as 2019. But with the changing of the guard at Aston and a big move into F1 as a constructor, the whole plan was put on ice.
The marque has since then and up to this point been relatively noncommittal on its intentions with the WEC, and it’s taken partnering with a customer team in Heart of Racing to make the project’s revival tenable.
The marque has since then and up to this point been relatively noncommittal on its intentions with the WEC and indeed, it’s taken partnering with a customer team in Heart of Racing, to make the project’s revival tenable. All that being said, the claim is that the idea was never fully dead, with Heart of Racing and Aston Martin staying in touch on the subject since the team’s founding in 2020.
Stroll summed up Aston’s approach to the revival of the programme pretty succinctly. “We have an incredible hypercar and the world deserves to see it race. We’re doing it because it’s there.”
Incidentally, the Valkyrie Hypercar will be the first Aston Martin factory racing effort not run by Prodrive – who did everything from the latest Vantages, to the Aston Martin Lola LMP1 car, to the DBR9 of the mid-2000s – for over 20 years.
“Our team has grown exponentially since we began racing with those famous wings at Daytona in 2020,” said Heart of Racing Team Principal, Ian James.
“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.”
“The bar is set very high and we wouldn’t be entering if we didn’t think we could write a new glorious chapter with the Valkyrie”, Carter asserts.
The Valkyrie’s addition to the Hypercar roster for 2025 is only the latest in a ballooning line-up. With new entries expected from BMW, Lamborghini, Alpine, additional Porsche customer cars, in addition to the existing grid and any extra cars they add to their rosters, we could see upwards of 30 Hypercars battling it out for supremacy at Le Mans in 2025.
Not bad going and needless to say, we couldn’t be more excited to hear the howl of a V12 engine down the Mulsanne, battling for contemporary honours once again.