Aston Martin’s long road back to Le Mans and top-class endurance racing has come into focus, as the Valkyrie AMR-LMH began testing at Silverstone and Donington Park last week. Aston has released photos, showing a prototype that looks quite literally like an amped up Valkyrie road car, only with better aero. In other words, precisely how a Le Mans Hypercar should look.
See, when regulators first publicized the new Hypercar ruleset in 2018, the resulting prototype race cars were intended to have a much closer link to production vehicles, like the Valkyrie. Aston Martin was, in fact, one of the first manufacturers on board. But then, as the new class was formalized, that link was obscured. As a result, practically all Hpercars that competed at Le Mans last month have no direct link to a production vehicle. Toyota was famously working on a road version of its GR010 Hybrid until that project mysteriously went up in smoke. However, Ferrari appears to be working to distill aspects of its two-time Le Mans-winning 499P into its next halo product.
When the rules moved away from an overt production link, Aston likewise canceled its prototype competition efforts, choosing instead to concentrate on GT racing with the Vantage, as it has for decades. This decision also coincided with Aston Martin involving itself fully in Formula 1, so it’s likely that it couldn’t spare the extra expense to take the Valkyrie racing. But the game’s now back on for the British marque, and the Hypercar looks appropriately mean in testing.
Aston Martin’s development driver, Darren Turner, joined The Heart of Racing’s Mario Farnbacher and Harry Tincknell to sample the AMR-LMH in the U.K. The Heart of Racing is Aston’s partner through both its GT and Hypercar endeavors, and the two entities have begun “a full development schedule to prepare the car ahead of FIA homologation in the autumn and its competitive debut in early 2025” in both the World Endurance Championship and IMSA, per an Aston Martin press release. It’s tremendously exciting that fans on both sides of the pond will be able to see this thing and hear its 6.5-liter, Cosworth-built V12 in action. We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again: we’re living in a true golden age of endurance racing.
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