Valkyrie to carry on Aston Martin Racing legacy at 24:00 Le Mans
Jun 14, 2025
|
This marks an important milestone in the history of the Le Mans competition and a decisive turning point in the motorsport legacy of British super-high-end performance brand Aston Martin. Valkyrie, a pure racing machine born on the road, finally begins to fulfill his destiny, and two green hypercars wearing special livery from the Aston Martin THOR team run through the historic pitlane to compete over the Circuit de la Sarthe.
Aston Martin CEO Adrian Hallmark:
Valkyrie's debut at 24:00 Le Mans is an important milestone in both vehicle development and the brand's motorsport history. Le Mans is the pinnacle of endurance races and perhaps the most famous single race on Earth. It is only natural that Aston Martin is included in the hypercar class, and it should be a model that can impress the countless fans who gathered to watch the game and millions of fans around the world. Motorsports fans have long been waiting for the moment when Valkyrie's V12 engine sounds Mulsanne Straight. Aston Martin is proud to bring this powerful sound back to its natural stage. Together with our excellent partner, The Heart of Racing, we will do our best to achieve results worthy of the efforts we have put in so far."
The livery is designed in the form of a Union Flag flying along the side of the engine cover pin. It paid tribute to the great British motorsport legacy at Le Mans and was produced as part of a brand-level celebration as Aston Martin returns to the top Le Mans class this year. In addition, Aston Martin announced this week that it will produce Valkyrie LM (Valkyrie LM), a non-homologized limited production version of Valkyrie racing cars. In addition, it also plans to operate an immersive driver development program that provides the top-notch driving experience of modern endurance racing to provide an exclusive racing experience to a small number of customers.
The Aston Martin THOR Team Valkyrie is a model born under the leadership of The Heart of Racing (THOR) Works Team. It is the first "Le Mans Hypercar (LMH)" of Aston Martin to compete in the Hypercar category, the top class of the FIA Wrld Endurance Championship (WEC). This marks the first time for Aston Martin Works to compete in the hypercar class, including the 24 Hours of Le Mans, since the launch of the WEC series in 2012.
Valkyrie lays the groundwork for Aston Martin to try again for the overall championship at the 24:00 Le Mans, the world's best endurance race. Aston Martin is one of the oldest participating manufacturers in the history of endurance racing and one of the most successful brands with 11 championship titles at the FIA World Endurance Championships (WEC). This is the first challenge since Carroll Shelby (USA) and Roy Salvadori (UK) won the overall Le Mans title 66 years ago with Aston Martin DBR1.
The race-optimized Valkyrie Hypercar's carbon fiber chassis is equipped with a modified version of the low-burn specification based on the natural inhalation-type 6.5-liter V12 Cosworth engine. The engine rotates up to 11,000 rpm based on a general road driving model and produces an output of more than 1,000 horsepower. For the game, the engine, located at the center of the entire Valkyrie lineage, is set strictly in compliance with the prescribed output of 500 kW (680 horsepower).
For the Le Mans competition, the Aston Martin THOR team will return to the three-driver system that operated in the WEC season opener "Qatar 1812km" in Lusail in February.
This means IMSA Valkyrie racer and IMSA GTD Pro class winner Ross Gunn will once again join the UK national driver elite lineup of #007 vehicles. Harry Tinknell, the 2016 European Le Mans Series (ELMS) overall champion and winner of the 2020 Le Mans LMGTE class with Aston Martin, will also be in the vehicle, with Tom Gamble, a promising endurance race player, completing the driver lineup. For both Le Mans and Gamble, who have a total of five Le Mans participation experiences, this 2025 tournament means that it is the first time for Le Mans to participate in the best class.
#Likewise for all three drivers aboard the 009 Valkyrie, this is their first appearance in Le Mans' best class. Marco ø (Denmark), the most successful Walks driver in Aston Martin's history, will participate in the tournament for the 11th time in his career. He won the LMGT class with Aston Martin Vantage in 2022 and is a three-time WECGT class champion. The driver to work with Sørensen is Alex Riveras of Spain, who has won multiple WEC and IMSA GTD Pro classes, teaming up as usual. In addition, 2022 IMSA GTD class champion Roman De Angelis of Canada will make his second appearance in Le Mans through this tournament.
Valkyrie has completed nine out of a total of 10 races since his debut and will compete in Le Mans with high reliability. In the WEC, the #009 vehicle completed a 10-hour race in the opening match in Qatar, and then steadily accumulated data and boosted performance through six-hour races in Imola (Italy) and six-hour races in Spa Francorchamps (Belgium). As a result, at the Belgian Games, the #007 Valkyrie, driven by Harry Tinknell and Tom Gamble, finished with the lead lap in the most competitive hypercar class in WEC history, reaching the brink of points.
In IMSA, Valkyrie was recorded as the first LMH rule-based vehicle to earn points on her debut in the Sebring 12-hour race. Since then, he has consistently entered the top 10 in all races in North America, proving his outstanding competitiveness and completion performance.
Aston Martin THOR President Ian James:
"Given Valkyrie's specificity and the fact that we are a new team just launched from the Hypercar class, we have carefully set expectations from the beginning. Compared to proven teams run by the world's top durable race makers, we are steadily achieving our goals. If Valkyrie completes both of his Le Mans debuts and earns points, it will be a huge success in the early stages of the program. Although it is still only showing some of Valkyrie's potential, the more the race is played, the better the system on and off the track and accumulates key data that can be reflected in the development. It should not be forgotten that Le Mans is the first official 24-hour endurance race for Valkyrie, and the Circuit de la Sarthe is a special track with its own challenges that are difficult to replicate. We are fully aware of the situation we are going to face and we are in this game."
Aston Martin's durable race legacy is inextricably linked to Le Mans. In 1928, just 15 years after Robert Bamford and Lionel Martin founded the brand, Aston Martin took the stage at the Sart Circuit for the first time, competing in two AM415 "Internationals." Then in 1931, Augustus Cesare Bertelli and Maurice Harvey drove internationals to win their first 1.5-liter class, and continued to win in 1932 and 1933, proving their competitiveness. In the late 1930s, the Ulster model won two more championships, and before World War II, Aston Martin established itself as one of Le Mans' leading manufacturers.
World War II suspended Le Mans from 1940 to 1948, but Aston Martin also returned when the tournament resumed in 1949. In the 1950s, he played an unrivaled role in the 3-liter class, and in 1951, he won the first, second, and third places with DB2, winning the class six times, including a class championship. This golden age culminates with the 1959 overall championship led by Carol Shelby and Roy Salvadori. In addition, during this period, Aston Martin has established itself as a racing reputation where legendary drivers gather. Jim Clark, Sterling Moss, Peter Collins, Sir Jack Brabham, Shelby, Salvadori, Tony Brooks, Phil Hill, John Surtes, Innes Island, Paul Frere, Graham Hill, and Bruce McLaren all played on the Le Mans stage with Aston Martin machines.
As we enter the 21st century, Aston Martin once again establishes itself as one of the world's leading GT manufacturers. After returning to Le Mans in 2006 by climbing to the podium in the GT1 class, Darren Turner, Rickard Rydell and David Brabham won an impressive victory over Corvette in 2007 with a DBR9 equipped with a powerful V12 engine. The following year, Aston Martin Racing proved its ability by winning two consecutive GT1 classes. In the WEC era, which began in 2012, Vantage added five class wins, and the most recent victory was recorded in 2022.
Valkyrie is recorded as the 29th Aston Martin chassis/engine combination model to compete in Le Mans. No stage has given Aston Martin as much success as Le Mans, and no stage has firmly proved that Aston Martin's DNA originated from a pure spirit of competition as Le Mans.
This article was translated by Naver AI translator.
