- An Aston Martin Valkyrie AMR-LMH race car is being developed for the top class of the IMSA SportsCar Championship and FIA World Endurance Championship
- The car will be fielded by the new team Aston Martin Thor, and will start racing in 2025
- The team’s first two drivers have been announced
Aston Martin on Thursday provided an update on its program to enter a race car based on the Valkyrie hypercar in top-level endurance racing starting in 2025, including naming the first two drivers.
Aston Martin plans to field two examples of the race car, which is known as the Valkyrie AMR-LMH, in both the IMSA SportsCar Championship and FIA World Endurance Championship. The latter 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.
Alex Riberas
The Valkyrie AMR-LMH race cars will be fielded by the new team Aston Martin Thor, a partnership between Aston Martin and Heart of Racing, a U.S.-based team that already competes with Aston Martin Vantage race cars at the GT3 level. The first confirmed drivers for the new team are Alex Riberas and Harry Tincknell. Additional drivers will be named in due course.
Riberas has already raced for Heart of Racing at the GT3 level in both the SportsCar Championship (GTD Pro) and World Endurance Championship (LMGT3), and has notched up some wins. Tincknell has also competed in the World Endurance Championship with some wins under his belt, including spending time behind the wheel of the Ford GT race car and Nissan’s failed GT-R LM Nismo LMP1.
Harry Tincknell
The Valkyrie AMR-LMH they will pilot is being developed to meet LMH rules, which will make it eligible for the premier GTP class of the SportsCar Championship and Hypercar class of the World Endurance Championship. The Aston Martin Formula 1 team’s Aston Martin Performance Technologies consulting division is developing the car, in partnership with Heart of Racing.
Aston Martin already completed much of the development in years prior, as the Valkyrie AMR Pro track car launched in 2021 was originally intended to be an LMH race car ready to compete at Le Mans as early as 2021, though the plan was scuttled in 2020 following the onset of the pandemic.
Aston Martin Valkyrie
The Valkyrie AMR-LMH will be a very different beast to the road car, whose name it shares. It will feature a unique chassis that’s both longer and wider than the chassis in the road car. It will retain the road car’s 6.5-liter V-12, but with modifications to meet Balance of Performance rules as well as durability to last the length of a 24-hour race. The mild-hybrid system of the road car will also be removed for the race car.
The Valkyrie AMR-LMH’s first races will be the Qatar 1812 km next February and 12 Hours of Sebring next March. The races are the respective opening rounds for the World Endurance Championship and SportsCar Championship.