Heart of Racing to Lead LMH Trackside Ops, Driver Selection

The Heart of Racing will be responsible for trackside operations and sourcing driver talent for the resurrected Aston Martin Valkyrie LMH program, according to team principal Ian James.

As announced on Wednesday, the American squad will run the Valkyrie LMH car in the 2025 FIA World Endurance Championship and IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship seasons.

Aston Martin will develop a race-primed version of the V12-powered Valkyrie hypercar at its Performance Technologies division in Silverstone, but Heart of Racing will be in charge of responsibilities at the track. 

“Aston are responsible for the car and getting a race-ready car prepared,” James told Sportscar365. “Heart of Racing will be the operation at the race track.

“It will be primarily Heart of Racing; obviously there is the technical side from AMPT that they will provide, and then you have Cosworth on the engine side, so there’s a conglomeration of everything but primarily Heart of Racing.”

The boots on the ground, and the brains behind the pitwall, will come from Heart of Racing, with James stating that the nearly 40-strong trackside team will “double in size to take on the program.”

The team, currently operating its championship-winning GT program from Sanford, Fla. looks set for expansion at home and in Europe, with James confirming that it will have a satellite base in the U.K.

However, a location is undecided and is expected to be finalized in the next few months.

James feels that Aston Martin “rubber stamped” its approval of the team’s quality, based on its success with the British marque’s GT offerings since debuting in IMSA’s GTD class in 2020.

“It honestly has a surreal feeling,” he said. “This is a big program, a big rubber stamp that ‘hey you guys are doing a good job.’

“It wouldn’t matter with the financials or whatever, they wouldn’t trust a team based on that. Those famous wings are kind of on our shoulders a little bit here.

“Yes, they are trying to produce a fast race car, but the level of the team is really high and the faith Aston Martin has shown in us is massive.

“I think if you trace it back it was this exact week in 2019 that Gabe [Newell, Heart of Racing team owner] said, ‘You should set up your own team,’ and back then we didn’t even own a screwdriver.

“So this definitely wouldn’t have been on the radar, but there’s confidence in what we’ve been able to do. There’s a long way for us to go as an organization, but you’ve got to go for it.”

Utilizing Aston’s F1 Driver Talent “Not Crucial”

The Valkyrie LMH program will run alongside Aston Martin’s involvement in Formula 1, however James downplayed the need to involve drivers from the open-wheel operation.

Drivers are yet to be confirmed, although James established that talent from the current Heart of Racing roster would be called up to form the lineups.

“From the HoR point of view, it’s not an ambition to have any big-name driver,” he said.

“Would it add to the program? Yes. Are these guys amazing race car drivers? Yes. And they have proven how successful they are in sports car racing.

“I’ve been studying the landscape and this generation of top-class cars is more relevant to GT drivers, and if you’ve seen the success of Porsche and Ferrari they’ve done that.

“But today, fuel and tire mileage and stuff like that. GT drivers I believe can manage traffic, see the bigger picture [better] than somebody that comes on a one-off from an open-wheel background and it’s very insular and trying to do the best for themselves.

“No door is closed for sure, and if you’ve got a world-class driver like Fernando [Alonso] you’d be jumping for joy. But it’s not crucial to the success of the program.”