Can it repeat the famous outright victory of the DBR1 in 1959?
Aston Martin has confirmed it will once again aim for outright victory at the 24 Hours of Le Mans with a racing version of its Valkyrie hypercar.
Although the manufacturer has an enviable record at the Circuit de la Sarthe over the past 95 years, with 19 class wins, it has just one overall victory to its name — in 1959 an Aston Martin DBR1, arguably one of the most beautiful racing cars of all time, triumphed at Le Mans with British ace Roy Salvadori and American legend Carroll Shelby having shared driving duties.
Valkyrie AMR Pro details
Making the announcement this afternoon with a full reveal of the car at its headquarters at Silverstone, Aston Martin Racing (AMR) confirmed that the Valkyrie AMR Pro will be entered into not only the Hypercar class of the FIA World Endurance Championship (Wec) for the 2025 season, but also the Grand Touring Prototype (GTP) class of the North American Imsa WeatherTech SportsCar Championship.
AMR also committed to developing new GT3 and GT4 cars to incoming regulations, such as 2024’s LMGT3 rules which will replace the GTE class in the Wec.
Those cars will be based on the Aston Martin Vantage platform, meaning that when the Valkyrie AMR Pro takes its place on the grid at Le Mans in two years’ time, Aston Martin will be the only manufacturer to have a presence in all of the top endurance-racing categories (from Hypercar to GT4), as well as in Formula 1.
“Performance is the lifeblood of everything that we do at Aston Martin, and motorsport is the ultimate expression of this pursuit of excellence,” Lawrence Stroll, executive chairman of Aston Martin Lagonda, said.
“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.”
As part of the wider Wec and Imsa series, the Valkyrie will be racing around the world in the two of most prestigious endurance motorsport categories.
That means it will take its place among the field at renowned events other than Le Mans, such as the Rolex 24 at Daytona and the 12 Hours of Sebring, two of the most high profile North American motorsport events.
The honour of preparing the Valkyrie AMR Pro cars will go to The Heart of Racing (HoR), a team set up in 2020 which has always competed Aston Martins — and which was born out of American philanthropist Gabe Newell’s 2014-founded charity that raises money for the Seattle Children’s Cardiology Research Fund, among other noble causes.
Team principal Ian James said: “It’s a privilege to be able to bring Aston Martin back to the top of endurance racing with The 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.”
Racer based on 1,000bhp road car
The road-going Valkyrie hypercar is a formidable enough thing as it is. Its petrol-electric hybrid powertrain, centred around a bespoke Cosworth-developed 6.5-litre naturally aspirated V12 engine, churns out in excess of 1,000bhp and revs to 11,000rpm.
The racing version’s engine will be modified to satisfy regulations in both series, and still requires homologation ahead of the 2025 campaigns. It must also meet the Balance of Performance (BoP) requirements for the Wec Hypercar class.
Aston Martin’s enviable Le Mans history
As AMR was only too keen to point out, Aston’s history at Le Mans is a proud one. The solitary but much-vaunted overall victory came in 1959, with the DBR1/300 in the hands of Salvadori and Shelby — the man who famously went on to found his eponymous car company associated with high-power AC Cobras and Ford Mustangs.
It was Shelby who was also pivotal in the Ford programme for the ultra-successful GT40 racers of the late 1960s — something immortalised in the film Le Mans ’66 (or Ford v Ferrari, if you live in America), where he was played by Matt Damon.
Aston had been close to winning outright at Le Mans in the period prior to 1959, having first competed in 1928 — five years after the first-ever endurance race took place at the French circuit. And the win in ’59 was actually a one-two finish for the manufacturer, as a French-Belgian crew piloted another DBR1/300 in behind the Salvadori/ Shelby car.
Of Aston’s 19 class victories at the venue since, five of them have come during the AMR era that began in 2004.
The most recent was in 2020, when a three-man team including Belgian sportscar race ace Maxime Martin, and Brits Alex Lynn and Harry Tincknell, brought the No.97 Vantage AMR home first in the LM GTE Pro class, securing 20th overall. The sister No.95 car that year finished third in class.
AMR also took class victories at Le Mans in 2007 and ’08, with the DBR9, and in the 2014 and 2017 editions with GTE versions of the previous-generation Vantage; the 2020 win came with the racing version of the current car.
The announcement of the Valkyrie entering the Hypercar class in Wec, and the Imsa GTP category, came in the 110th year since Aston Martin was formed. More than 240 drivers have raced 27 different chassis and engine combinations of Aston Martins at Le Mans over the past 95 years.
But whoever turns out to be the lucky driving crew for the Valkyrie AMR Pro entrant in 2025 will have the weight of expectation on their shoulders — Aston will be looking for the overall win in two years’ time.
Adam Carter, Aston Martin’s head of endurance motorsport, said: “Valkyrie takes us back into the top tier of sports-car 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.
“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.”
- If you found Aston Martin’s motorsport plans interesting, you might want to read Will Dron’s review of the Aston Martin DB12
- You might also be interested in our Aston Martin DBX707 on-track video review
- Also check out Peter Sellers’s Aston Martin DB4GT, which could sell for £2.6m at the Goodwood Bonhams auction 2023
Keyword: Aston Martin to race for outright Le Mans victory with Valkyrie AMR Pro hypercar