Heart of Racing to Run Valkyrie in IMSA, WEC in 2025

Aston Martin will revive its Valkyrie Le Mans Hypercar program, partnering with The Heart of Racing for a dual series campaign in the FIA World Endurance Championship and IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship beginning in 2025.

The American squad will campaign ‘at least one’ Valkyrie in both the WEC’s Hypercar class as well as the WeatherTech Championship’s GTP category, marking the first time a car built to LMH regulations will compete in both series.

The announcement confirms a long-rumored revival of the Valkyrie program, which lay dormant since 2020 after Aston Martin put its plans on hold amidst a re-evaluation of its motorsport strategies.

Media reports linking Heart of Racing to the Valkyrie program were downplayed by team principal Ian James as recently as last month. The team receives backing through video game magnate Gabe Newell, who founded Heart of Racing in 2014.

Aston Martin Performance Technologies, which is based in the manufacturer’s newly established motorsport headquarters outside the Silverstone Circuit, has begun work to develop the Valkyrie for competition within a predefined aerodynamic and power performance ahead of a planned homologation for both WEC and WeatherTech Championship competition.

It will continue to use the Cosworth-built, 6.5-liter naturally aspirated V12 engine, which is to be modified to incorporate the Hypercar class’ Balance of Performance requirements.

Cosworth remains “an integral partner” in the project, while Multimatic, which developed the original is also still involved.

The race car, which is based off of the track-only Valkyrie AMR Pro, will run in a non-hybrid capacity, with the battery-electric hybrid system that features on the road-going Valkyrie absent from the race car.

“It’s a privilege to be able to bring Aston Martin back to the top of endurance racing with the Heart of Racing,” said James.

“Our team has grown exponentially since we began racing with those famous wings at Daytona in 2020.

“We understand and are aligned with the ethos of the brand and we have developed our own systems and technologies to extract the maximum performance of the cars we compete with.

“Our understanding of Valkyrie is strong and we have worked closely with it through our customer activation programs for two years now.

“This HoR team has big ambitions in endurance racing and this is absolutely the right time for us to step into the top classes of WEC and IMSA and challenge for overall honors.

“This is not an easy target, but between our partners and the support of Aston Martin Performance Technologies, it is one we have all the tools and capabilities in place to hit the bullseye with.”

Aston Martin’s most recent effort in top-class prototype racing at the 24 Hours of Le Mans came in 2011 with the ill-fated AMR-One program, which only took part in two races.

The British marque holds one overall Le Mans victory, dating back to when Roy Salvadori and Carroll Shelby drove to victory in a DBR1 in 1959.

“Today marks the beginning of a new chapter for Aston Martin in endurance racing,” said Aston Martin head of Endurance Motorsport Adam Carter.

“As a manufacturer, Aston Martin has a consistent record of success at world championship level and, through the efforts of the Heart of Racing, also now in IMSA.

“Valkyrie takes us back into the top tier of sports car racing and, together with our partners we are absolutely confident that we can deliver a race car with the potential and the performance capabilities to fight alongside the benchmark machinery in the class.

“To be able to do this in cooperation with a proven championship-winning operation such as Heart of Racing ensures we have all we need to race from a competitive platform.

“It’s a fascinating program, given that this is the only hypercar in the class with direct synergies to its road car counterpart, but the Valkyrie concept was always intended to break through boundaries, and now we have the opportunity to show what it can do on a track.”