Aston Martin Valkyrie ready for its moment of destiny in the 24 Hours of Le Mans

Aston Martin makes racing history this weekend when it returns to the premier class of the world’s most famous endurance motorsport event, the 93rd 24 Hours of Le Mans. Valkyrie, the breathtaking hypercar, takes its place in the race it was born for, thus allowing the famous Wings to challenge for its first overall victory since 1959.

A landmark occasion for the event, and a critical moment in the sporting legacy of the British ultra-luxury performance brand, Valkyrie – a pure racer bred from the road – will finally begin to fulfil its destiny when two of the stunning green, specially-liveried Aston Martin THOR Team hypercars roll down the storied pitlane and on to the Circuit de la Sarthe for the first time competitively.

“Valkyrie’s debut in the 24 Hour of Le Mans is a key milestone both in the development of the car and the sporting history of the brand,” said Aston Martin CEO Adrian Hallmark. “Le Mans is the pinnacle of endurance motorsport and, perhaps, the most famous standalone race on Earth. It is only right that the Hypercar class of the field contains an Aston Martin, and one that galvanizes the legions of fans who come to watch this wonderful race as well as the millions more who follow it from around the world.

“The sport’s fans have waited a long time to hear the Valkyrie’s V12 engine echo through the trees along the famous Mulsanne Straight, and Aston Martin is proud to bring this evocative soundtrack back to its natural habitat. Along with our outstanding partner, The Heart of Racing, we will do our utmost to ensure Valkyrie delivers on its promise with a performance worthy of all the work that has gone into the programme thus far.”

The livery, which features a Union Flag flying along the side of the engine cover fin, is a tribute to the great British racing heritage at Le Mans and forms part of Aston Martin’s wider celebrations on its return to the top class of the great race this year. Aston Martin also announced this week that it will build a limited run of a non-homologated version of the Valkyrie racer, designated Valkyrie LM, along with a fully immersive driver-development programme that will provide the ultimate present-day top-class endurance motorsport experience to the hands of an exclusive number of customers.

Masterminded by works team The Heart of Racing (THOR), the two Aston Martin THOR Team Valkyries are the first factory Aston Martin ‘Le Mans Hypercars’ (LMH) to compete in the top class (Hypercar) of the FIA World Endurance Championship (WEC) – which includes the blue riband 24 Hours of Le Mans – since the series was founded in 2012.

Valkyrie once again positions Aston Martin – one of endurance racing’s oldest competitors and one of WEC’s most successful manufacturers with 11 championship titles – in contention to challenge for a first outright victory at the world’s greatest race, the 24 Hours of Le Mans, since Carroll Shelby (USA) and Roy Salvadori (GBR) triumphed in the Aston Martin DBR1 66 years ago this week.

Developed by Aston Martin and THOR from the Valkyrie production model, the LMH version is the only car in the WEC’s premier category derived from a road-legal hypercar and is also the only car built to Hypercar homologation that competes simultaneously in WEC and the IMSA WeatherTech Sportscar Championship.

The race-optimised Valkyrie Hypercar carbon-fibre chassis is powered by a modified lean-burn iteration of the sensational naturally-aspirated 6.5-litre V12 Cosworth-developed engine, which in standard road-going form revs to 11,000rpm and develops more than 1000bhp. For competition purposes, the engine – which persists at the heart of the entire Valkyrie bloodline – adheres to a strict 500kw (680bhp) regulation power limit.

For Le Mans, the Aston Martin THOR Team returns to the three-driver line-ups that it ran with for the WEC season opener – the Qatar 1812km at Lusail – in February.

It means that IMSA Valkyrie racer and IMSA GTD Pro racer winner Ross Gunn rejoins the regular all-British line-up in the #007 entry. Harry Tincknell, the 2016 European Le Mans Series (ELMS) overall champion and 2020 Le Mans LMGTE winner (for Aston Martin) will also be joined in this car by rising endurance racing star Tom Gamble. For Gunn and Gamble, who have five Le Mans starts between them, the 2025 edition marks their debut in the event’s top class.

The same is true of all three drivers in the #009 Valkyrie. Aston Martin’s most successful works driver Marco Sørensen (DEN) is making his 11th start in the event, having won the LMGTE class in an Aston Martin Vantage in 2022. The three-time WEC GT champion is joined, as always, by multiple WEC and IMSA GTD Pro race-winner Alex Riberas (ESP). The 2022 IMSA GTD champion Roman De Angelis (CDN) rejoins the crew for Le Mans for his second Le Mans start.

Valkyrie comes into Le Mans with an enviable reliability record, having recorded nine finishes from its first 10 starts in all competitions. In WEC, having completed its debut with #009 after 10 hours in Qatar, the Aston Martin THOR Team has steadily gathered data and unlocked performance in the subsequent 6 Hours of Imola (ITA), and 6 Hours of Spa Francorchamps (BEL); so much so that the #007 Valkyrie, driven by Tincknell and Gamble, were on the cusp of a points finish in Belgium having finished on the lead lap against the most competitive WEC Hypercar field ever assembled.

In IMSA, Valkyrie became the first car built to LMH regulations to finish in the points (on its debut race in the Sebring 12 Hours) and has finished in the top ten in each of the races it has contested so far in North America.

“While we have always kept our expectations in check, given the unique nature of Valkyrie and the fact that we are a new team at Hypercar level when compared to the well-established and successful programmes of some of our rivals who represent the best endurance racing manufacturers in the world, we are hitting our targets consistently,” said Aston Martin THOR team principal Ian James. “For Valkyrie’s debut at Le Mans, finishing with both cars, and with a points finish, would represent a supreme success for a programme in its infancy. We are still only scratching the surface of Valkyrie’s potential, but with every race that passes we improve our systems on and off track and gather more vital data that feeds back into the development process.

“It’s important to keep in mind that Le Mans represents the first competitive 24-hour event for Valkyrie and that the Circuit de la Sarthe throws up its own unique set of challenges that are hard to replicate anywhere else. We go into the event aware of what lays ahead of us.”

Aston Martin’s endurance racing legacy is indelibly linked to Le Mans. A mere 15 years after the marque was formed by Robert Bamford and Lionel Martin, it was racing at la Sarthe; its debut coming in 1928 with a pair of AM415 ‘Internationals’. Three years later it claimed its first victory when Augustus Cesare Bertelli and Maurice Harvey won the 1.5-litre class in an International. It took class honours in 1932 and ’33 as well. Two more wins in the ’30s for the Ulster meant that Aston Martin ended the pre-war era as one of Le Mans pre-eminent manufacturers.

The race wasn’t held between 1940-1948 with Europe affected by the second World War, but once it returned in 1949, Aston Martin did too, making the 3-litre class its own through the 1950s. It won the class six times, finishing first, second and third with the DB2 in 1951. This halcyon era culminated in a glorious overall victory for Shelby and Salvadori in 1959. It was also in this period that Aston Martin became known as a haven for legendary racing stars. Among the many aces to have raced Aston Martins at Le Mans are Jim Clark, Sir Stirling Moss, Peter Collins, Sir Jack Brabham, Shelby, Salvadori, Tony Brooks, Phil Hill, John Surtees, Innes Ireland, Paul Frére, Graham Hill and Bruce McLaren.

This century Aston Martin has come to the fore once again as one of the truly great GT manufacturers. Returning to the race with a GT1 class podium in 2006, Darren Turner, Rickard Rydell and David Brabham recorded a famous victory over Corvette with the mighty V12-powered DBR9 in 2007. Aston Martin Racing repeated the victory the following year. In the WEC era, which began in 2012, Aston Martin has added five more class victories with Vantage, the most recent in 2022.

Valkyrie marks the 29^th different Aston Martin chassis/engine combination to compete at Le Mans. No venue has given Aston Martin so much success, or more steadfastly proven that its DNA is forged out of the very essence of competition, than Le Mans.

Adam Carter, Head of Endurance Motorsport, said: “Aston Martin was born through a desire to compete, and that essence remains within the company’s very DNA to this day. It could be argued that Valkyrie is the ultimate expression of that competitive mindset, and certainly it has its roots founded in world-beating car design inspiration. We are still at the beginning of our journey with the ‘LMH’ Valkyrie, which it seems has already earned its place in the hearts of so many fans.

“With that in mind we have realistic but challenging expectations of the car in its debut 24-hour race at Le Mans. We have already learned so much since we began racing it in February, and I am certain we will gather significant data from the race with which to build into the second half of the season. That said, we are here to race, and we look forward to putting our best foot forward for the fans as we strive for our first points finish of the season in WEC on the biggest stage of them all.”