Aston Martin names first drivers for Valkyrie LMH race automobile

• An Aston Martin Valkyrie AMR-LMH race automobile is being developed for the highest class of the IMSA SportsCar Championship and FIA World Endurance Championship
• The automobile shall be fielded by the brand new crew Aston Martin Thor, and can begin racing in 2025
• The crew’s first two drivers have been introduced

Aston Martin on Thursday supplied an replace on its program to enter a race automobile primarily based on the Valkyrie hypercar in top-level endurance racing beginning in 2025, together with naming the primary two drivers.

Aston Martin plans to subject two examples of the race automobile, which is named the Valkyrie AMR-LMH, in each 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 about to chase outright victory on the French traditional, one thing it achieved solely as soon as, in 1959, with Roy Salvadori and Carroll Shelby in an Aston Martin DBR1.

Alex Riberas

The Valkyrie AMR-LMH race automobiles shall be fielded by the brand new crew Aston Martin Thor, a partnership between Aston Martin and Coronary heart of Racing, a U.S.-based crew that already competes with Aston Martin Vantage race automobiles on the GT3 stage. The primary confirmed drivers for the brand new crew are Alex Riberas and Harry Tincknell. Further drivers shall be named in the end.

Riberas has already raced for Coronary heart of Racing on the GT3 stage in each the SportsCar Championship (GTD Professional) and World Endurance Championship (LMGT3), and has notched up some wins. Tincknell has additionally competed within the World Endurance Championship with some wins underneath his belt, together with spending time behind the wheel of the Ford GT race automobile and Nissan’s failed GT-R LM Nismo LMP1.

Harry Tincknell

The Valkyrie AMR-LMH they are going to pilot is being developed to satisfy LMH guidelines, which can make it eligible for the premier GTP class of the SportsCar Championship and Hypercar class of the World Endurance Championship. The Aston Martin Method 1 crew’s Aston Martin Efficiency Applied sciences consulting division is creating the automobile, in partnership with Coronary heart of Racing.

Aston Martin already accomplished a lot of the event in years prior, because the Valkyrie AMR Professional monitor automobile launched in 2021 was initially supposed to be an LMH race automobile able to compete at Le Mans as early as 2021, although the plan was scuttled in 2020 following the onset of the pandemic.

Aston Martin Valkyrie

The Valkyrie AMR-LMH shall be a really totally different beast to the street automobile, whose title it shares. It would function a novel chassis that is each longer and wider than the chassis within the street automobile. It would retain the street automobile’s 6.5-liter V-12, however with modifications to satisfy Stability of Efficiency guidelines in addition to sturdiness to final the size of a 24-hour race. The mild-hybrid system of the street automobile will even be eliminated for the race automobile.

The Valkyrie AMR-LMH’s first races would be the Qatar 1812 km subsequent February and 12 Hours of Sebring subsequent March. The races are the respective opening rounds for the World Endurance Championship and SportsCar Championship.