- Aston Martin has revealed the Valkyrie LMH race car designed to compete at the top level of endurance racing
- The car will be entered in the IMSA SportsCar Championship and FIA World Endurance Championship
- The car will be fielded by the new team Aston Martin THOR
The long road to Aston Martin’s Valkyrie racing at the 24 Hours of Le Mans is almost at an end, as the automaker late on Tuesday revealed the new racing version of its hypercar.
Aston Martin has partnered with The Heart of Racing (THOR) to enter the Valkyrie race car, built to meet LMH regulations, in the premier Hypercar and GTP classes of the respective FIA World Endurance Championship (WEC) and IMSA SportsCar Championship in 2025.
THOR is a U.S. team that races to raise funds for the Seattle Children’s Cardiology Research Fund and has already successfully competed in previous years with the Aston Martin Vantage GT3 in the GT classes of the World Endurance and SportsCar Championships.
The Valkyrie will be the first LMH car to compete in both the World Endurance and SportsCar Championships. It will also be the first derived from a road car.
The WEC boasts the 24 Hours of Le Mans on the calendar, and Aston Martin is set to chase outright victory at the French classic—something it achieved only once, in 1959, with Roy Salvadori and Carroll Shelby in an Aston Martin DBR1. There’s steep competition, though, as Aston Martin will be going up against the likes of BMW, Cadillac, Ferrari, Porsche, and Toyota. Genesis plans to join the fray in 2026, with Ford following a year later.
Aston Martin said the Valkyrie LMH race car features a unique, race-optimized carbon-fiber chassis but shares its Cosworth-built 6.5-liter V-12 with the Valkyrie road car, albeit minus the road car’s mild-hybrid system. For racing, the engine will run at lower revs and use a leaner fuel mixture to meet a 670-hp cap and to save fuel. Drive still goes to the rear wheels only, and the engine is mated to an Xtrac 7-speed sequential transmission with paddle shifters. For the SportsCar Championship, the car may have its mufflers swapped out for a straight-pipe setup for a bit of extra sound and excitement.
Aston Martin Valkyrie Hypercar
The suspension consists of optimized-geometry double wishbones front and rear, together with pushrod-actuated torsion bar springs with adjustable side and central dampers. Adjustable anti-roll bars also feature at both ends. At each hub is an 18-inch wheel with a series-specific tire. The weight of the car, without the driver and fuel, is expected to meet the regulated 1,030-kilogram (approximately 2,270-pound) minimum, Aston Martin said.
Two of the cars will be fielded in the WEC and a single car in the SportsCar Championship, and both efforts will be run by the Aston Martin THOR team.
For the WEC, Harry Tincknell and Tom Gamble will pilot a number 007 car (very James Bond), while a sister no. 009 car will be piloted by Marco Sørensen and Alex Riberas. In the SportsCar Championship, a single no. 23 car will be piloted by Ross Gunn and Roman De Angelis. Gunn will also drive the no. 007 car, and De Angelis the no. 009 car, alongside their respective WEC counterparts at Le Mans.
The Valkyrie LMH’s first race will be the WEC’s opening round, the Qatar 1812 km, scheduled for Feb. 28. The all-important Le Mans round will take place in mid-June.
