The British brand arrives in the Hypercar class
It’s official: Aston Martin will return to the premier class of the 24 Hours of Le Mans with two Valkyrie AMR-LMH Hypercars in 2025. The British ultra-luxury sports car brand is once again targeting success in the premier class of the legendary endurance race to break a fast at Le Mans which has lasted since 1959. Aston Martin’s goal is to enter the two cars in the entire 2025 WEC championship, the team that will manage the Valkyrie AMR-LMH Hypercars (in which Adrian Newey was involved) will be the Heart of Racing.
Adam CarterHead of Endurance Motorsport at Aston Martin, said: “Endurance has been in the brand’s DNA since its birth. We first raced at Le Mans more than 95 years ago, something no other road-going Hypercar manufacturer can boast. We are very proud of our connection with this wonderful event and, with this in mind, it is clear that we are committed to the WEC Hypercar concept and bringing our distinctive ‘Wings’ back to the forefront of international sports car racing, including at the 24 Hours of Le Mans. In 2025, with our Heart of Racing team, we intend to field two Aston Martin Valkyrie AMR-LMH Hypercars on the starting grid, to compete alongside a fantastic grid featuring the best sports car manufacturers in the world, and we are doing everything we can to ensure we can fight on the front lines. The Valkyrie AMR-LMH program is on schedule, with a significant amount of development taking place behind the scenes and ahead of the car’s track debut later in the summer. We then plan an intense period of testing to do kilometers on the car and learn everything we can in view of the homologation scheduled for the autumn.”
The Valkyrie AMR-LMH, with a race-optimized carbon fiber chassis, will use a modified version of the sensational 6.5-litre naturally aspirated V12 engine built by Cosworth and originally produced for the road-going Valkyrie, which in its standard version reaches 11,000 rpm and develops over 1,000 HP. The powertrain has been further improved to incorporate the critical Balance of Performance requirements of the Hypercar class and developed to withstand the rigors of high-level long-distance competition. As with the track Valkyrie AMR Pro, the battery hybrid system that characterizes the road Valkyrie is absent from the racing car.
Development of the Valkyrie AMR-LMH is already well underway, with recent track evaluation of the integrated systems at Aston Martin’s Silverstone testing facility and the Portimao circuit in Portugal. Heart of Racing also recently opened a team headquarters in the UK for its WEC programme, close to where the race cars are built in collaboration with Silverstone-based Aston Martin Performance Technologies, which is overseeing the design and development of the Valkyrie AMR -LMH.
Aston Martin and Heart of Racing also have an IMSA WeatherTech Sportscar program on the agenda for the Valkyrie AMR-LMH, to race in the GTP class of the US endurance series. The program will be operated from Heart of Racing headquarters in Phoenix, North America.
“With this new direction of the WEC regulations, we had to bring forward our plans to race more cars in the WEC Hypercar class. This has obviously condensed our build process, but we’re very excited about the prospect of having two cars on the track. We will be proud to be part of this class, which has seen a meteoric rise in the last two years and which offers extraordinary racing. The challenge that awaits us is immense and we can’t wait to face this adventure”he has declared Ian JamesTeam Principal of Heart of Racing.
Aston Martin’s entry into the Hypercar class ensures that the British ultra-luxury sports car manufacturer will be present in all aspects of endurance racing, from the gentleman racer to the pinnacle of the sport. Indeed, from 2025, Aston Martin will be the only manufacturer to compete at all levels of sports car and GT racing (from Hypercar to GT4) and the FIA Formula 1 World Championship. In total, more than 240 drivers have raced with Aston Martins at Le Mans for the last 95 years, in 27 different chassis and engine combinations.
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