Aston Martin Plans Twin Valkyrie Attack at Le Mans in 2025

With this year's 24 Hours of Le Mans just around the corner, Aston Martin has announced that it will bring two Valkyries to next year's Le Mans 24-hour race.

The automaker first announced its intention to bring the Valkyrie, a hypercar with a V12 engine, to Le Mans a year ago. However, the rules have since been changed, requiring a minimum of two cars to be entered in the hypercar class in which the Valkyrie will compete at Le Mans.

The Hypercar class is the premier class in the FIA World Endurance Championship and its highlight race is the Le Mans round. The doors are open to all. Valkyrie race cars have been developed to meet LMH rules and will compete in both the World Endurance Championship and the Sports Car Championship for a full season.

Aston Martin has partnered with U.S.-based Heart of Racing, which already competes in the GT class of the World Endurance and Sports Car Championships with its Aston Martin Vantage GT3. The team was created to raise funds for the Seattle Pediatric Heart Disease Research Foundation and is headed by former American Le Mans Series veteran Ian James.

Aston Martin has been working on a Valkyrie AMR Pro track car that will be launched in 2021, which was originally planned to be an LMH race car that could compete in Le Mans as early as 2021, but plans were put on hold in 2020 after a pandemic broke out and development related to the race car The majority of the development work on the race car has already been completed. The new car, known as the Valkyrie AMR-LMH, is currently being tested at Silverstone and Portimao race tracks and will be unveiled later this summer.

The Valkyrie AMR-LMH will be completely different from the road car. It will have a unique chassis that is longer and wider than the road car's chassis. It will retain the road car's 6.5-liter V12 engine, but will be modified to meet the Balance of Performance rules and have the durability to withstand 24-hour races. In addition, the road car's mild hybrid system will be eliminated in the race car.

Aston Martin has won Le Mans outright in the past. It was in 1959, when Roy Salvadori and Carroll Shelby drove the Aston Martin DBR1. starting in 2025, Aston Martin will again aim for outright victory in the French classic race.

Aston Martin will also be the only car manufacturer to compete not only in Formula 1, but also at the top levels of the World Endurance and Sports Car Championships. It will also maintain its current GT racing program.