Stroll Explains Why Aston Martin Revived Valkyrie LMH

Reviving the Aston Martin Valkyrie racing program ensures the high-performance hypercar does what it was “designed to do” according to the British manufacturer’s executive chairman Lawrence Stroll.

Aston Martin on Wednesday announced that it will bring back its LMH project, with American team The Heart of Racing running at least one car in the 2025 FIA World Endurance Championship and IMSA WeatherTech Sportscar Championship seasons.

Initial plans for Aston Martin to field a Valkyrie-based non-hybrid LMH car in the 2020-21 WEC season were placed on hold in February 2020.

The project lay dormant even as the Multimatic-developed car evolved into the track-only AMR Pro, which will serve as the basis for the upcoming competition model.

Stroll, who became Aston Martin Lagonda’s executive chairman in early 2020, highlighted the establishment of the Aston Martin Performance Technologies (AMPT) division as a major driving force behind the Valkyrie LMH project’s revival.

AMPT is based out of the manufacturer’s newly opened Technology Campus, located within the headquarters of its Formula 1 operations near Silverstone Circuit.

“Several reasons,” said Stroll when asked about the prototype racing comeback.

“Number one is because we have this incredible hypercar and it’s really a testament to all the people who designed it and built it, to be able to run it in passion, which is what it was designed to do.

“Secondly, we have this company that I was responsible for, Aston Martin Performance Technologies that we opened in this building, to bring performance and technologies from our Formula 1 team into our road cars.

“We really want to take the technology out of this car, out of our GT3 and GT4 cars that we’ll be campaigning and unveiling at the beginning of next year – we want all that to trickle down into our sports cars.

“I focused a lot more attention into the performance part of Aston Martin when I took over, hence the focus on the Formula 1 team, hence the focus on this.

“The DNA as we said has always been racing, has been in the blood of Aston Martin and I wanted to carry that tradition louder, harder and faster.”

The Heart of Racing team principal Ian James said that running the Valkyrie in competition was always a background topic as the team established its affiliation with Aston Martin in GT racing.

The team returned to the WeatherTech Championship in its current guise in 2020 and was not part of the original Valkyrie LMH project, but has emerged as a key Aston Martin partner squad in recent years.

“Just through our relationship on the GT side it’s a subject that never went away,” said James.

“It really was about timing when the resources were available. Obviously this was a huge undertaking to get this facility set up and get everybody in place.

“So I don’t think the conversation ever went completely dead. It was always in the background and when the timing came right we could push it through the final hurdle.”

Heart of Racing took delivery of a Valkyrie AMR Pro in the summer of 2022, which it first ran at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca that June.

“Le Mans this year was not a deciding factor on whether we go ahead with this,” said James. “But when we got our AMR Pro the reaction of everybody was, ‘Why’s this thing not racing?’

“Gabe [Newell, Heart of Racing team owner] who’s the background of the operation, said the same, ‘Why are we not racing that?’ Obviously it’s not as easy as just going racing with that car.

“We wanted to find a way to go racing with that car, and we’re lucky how it’s come around.”

Rollout Planned for Next Spring

The rollout for the LMH-spec Valkyrie is currently planned for the second quarter of next year, according Aston Martin’s Head of Endurance Motorsport Adam Carter.

“Testing will start around springtime,” he told Sportscar365. “Then we’ll go through a number of months worth of track testing as we head towards the homologation process.”

Testing will initially be focused on a single car before running splits across Europe and the U.S. to prepare for the Valkyrie’s dual series program in 2025.

“To start with, we will ensure that we’ve got all the right focus on one car and not multiplying the problems,” added Carter.

“So we’ll do the dev team’s work initially in the spring and then we’ll start to expand.

“Once we get further along and the specifications become more firmed up, then we’ll start to actually split. Because there are differences racing in the US.

“The types of track are different, just in terms of the layout, in terms of the conditions and the surface as well. But as everybody, endurance testing at Sebring is a good thing to do.”

Tim Fullbrook contributed to this report