Aston Martin said it wanted to be in the top class of the famous 24-hour races at Le Mans and Daytona and the WEC and IMSA championships. Aston Martin will run a car based on the Valkyrie AMR Pro, which is only used on the track. In 2025, the Le Mans version of the Valkyrie will race against a strong group of Hypercars. Racing has always been a part of the plan for the Aston Martin Valkyrie. Early plans to build it for the planned Hypercar endurance racing class were put on hold in 2020 after Canadian billionaire Lawrence Stroll bought shares in a British sports car company. When Michael bought what was then called the Racing Point F1 team and is now called Aston Martin Racing, the plans for the race Valkyrie were put on hold. Initially, it would be made in collaboration with another Formula 1 team, Red Bull Racing. After a long wait, Aston Martin announced that their hypercar would be able to fight for motorsport prizes. The company told us in 2021 that it would still run in the Valkyrie race. Starting in 2025, the Valkyrie will race in both the FIA World Endurance Championship and the IMSA WeatherTech Championship in the GTP class in the increasingly crowded Hypercar division. At least one American Heart of Racing team car will participate in each round of both events. The Valkyrie will run in the 24 Hours of Le Mans, the Rolex 24 at Daytona, and the 12 Hours of Sebring, three of the world’s most famous endurance races. The Valkyrie AMR Pro was made to follow the WEC’s LMH rules for the Hypercar class. It is only able to be used while on a track. Later, the IMSA’s LMDh rules came into effect. Under these rules, racers must use a chassis from one of four manufacturers and many parts already on the market to keep prices low. Aston Martin will keep racing the Valkyrie as an LMH vehicle since both LMH and LMDh cars can compete in the Hypercar and GTP classes. This gives designers more freedom, but the hybrid system needs to provide at least a bit of power to the front axle. Because all the electric help goes to the back axle, the Glickenhaus SCG 007 and the Valkyrie road vehicle can fight without a hybrid system. Even though the two classes have different kinds of technology, Hypercar racing uses a set of rules called “Balance of Performance” to ensure that all the cars in each event are on the same level. Candidates for LMH and LMDh must meet the same minimum weight, highest power limits, and the same aerodynamic parameters for downforce and drag. The racing Valkyrie will still have a 6.5-liter V-12 engine, but BoP will almost certainly ask for the AMR Pro’s 1001hp to be lowered. In 2021, Aston Martin told us that the AMR Pro race car could lap the Le Mans track in 3 minutes and 20 seconds. This was faster than Toyota’s LMP1 car, which won that year’s race. The Hypercar and GTP classes’ fields should be complete, making it hard to win the Valkyrie. Alpine and Lamborghini will join the series in 2019. They will join Cadillac, Ferrari, Glickenhaus, Peugeot, Porsche, Toyota, and Vanwall in the WEC and BMW and Acura in the IMSA in 2023. The Valkyrie, on the other hand, should be unbeatable in one race because, in Aston Martin’s words, it is “the first purebred hypercar to compete in both championships and the only one of its rivals that can trace its roots back to an existing production car.” Aston Martin has won 19 class titles at Le Mans over the years. In 1959, Roy Salvadori and Carroll Shelby won the overall race in the DBR1, which Aston Martin made.
