Riberas Looking to Continue Valkyrie’s “Upward Trajectory”

Alex Riberas is hopeful he’ll be able to continue the Aston Martin Valkyrie’s “very upward trajectory,” rejoining the team’s IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship lineup at Motul Petit Le Mans just a few weeks after scoring the car’s strongest result to date in the 6 Hours of Fuji.

Riberas, who forms part of Heart of Racing Team’s FIA World Endurance Championship lineup, joins Ross Gunn and Roman De Angelis aboard the No. 23 car for the ten-hour enduro at Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta.

The V12-powered Le Mans Hypercar has enjoyed an upturn in form during the second half of its debut campaign, peaking with a fifth place for Riberas and Marco Sorensen in the WEC round at Fuji, a weekend in which Sorensen also qualified third.

Speaking with Sportscar365 ahead of the WeatherTech Championship season finale, Riberas spoke positively about continuing the recent run of positive form for the program.

“It’s been definitely a very upward trajectory for the Valkyrie,” he said,

“I think the way the guys have progressed, especially after the summer break, that’s when I think we did a major step forward and we found the direction we want to continue to develop the car and that seems to be helping us so much.

“Fuji was a great race with the best result of the Valkyrie, with the top five. And obviously coming here to Petit Le Mans, it’s a different kind of beast of a race.

“Yes, it is part of the championship, but in and of itself, Petit Le Mans is a race that is much more about all or nothing and that presents its own challenges.

“So I’m sure we will have to deal with a lot of things that are going be unexpected.

“This race is always chaotic so I think if we are able to embrace the chaos in a way and make the most out of the situations, personally I think we have a good race car here.

“We might not be the quickest out there, but in terms of consistency if we put ourselves in the right spot, we have a clean race, we make smart choices throughout the race, that will put us in a position in the last two hours to go for it.”

Riberas has spent the majority of the season driving the Valkyrie in WEC and steps back into the Heart of Racing’s U.S.-based squad for the first time since the car’s WeatherTech Championship debut at the Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring in March.

The Spaniard spoke highly about the progress that has been made since then, indicating that it is something of a night-and-day situation compared to earlier this year.

“For people to understand, like the first half of the year, we didn’t go to the weekend and went through the playbook of a normal weekend,” said Riberas.

“So most of the times, like in Sebring, all we cared about was reliability. That was priority number one, two, three, four and five.

“So we didn’t care about performance. We were always just trying to put fires down, fix issues, understand why things were happening and that’s all we focused on.

“Now we actually have a performance run plan where we actually do quali sims, where we actually do long runs, where we actually try different directions on the setup.

“And now honestly it’s just much more enjoyable because you get into the weekend and you feel like you’re not out of place.

“This is the first time in IMSA for myself that I’ve gone out there and I feel like I belong and the car belongs around these other super fast cars. So it’s a good feeling.”