An Aston Martin spokesperson conformed to MotorsportWeek.com that the new Valkyrie LMH, scheduled to debut in the FIA World Endurance Championship and IMSA WeatherTech Sportscar Championship next year, will not have to build any road cars in order to get the car homologated for the LMH technical regulations.
This is because Aston Martin is building the car to the ‘dedicated prototype’ route defined in the ruleset, rather than modifying an existing road car to compete.
Under the latter, Aston Martin would have had to build 20 required road cars that the regulations would require for the car to be homologated, as was the plan for the aborted Valkyrie Hypercar programme, originally planned to debut in the WEC in 2021.
The new car will be built by Multimatic, one of Aston Martin’s partners, in co-operation with Aston Martin Performance Technologies, a new division of Aston Martin headed up by Adam Carter, Aston Martin’s head of endurance motorsport. It will use a V12 engine without any hybrid aspect.
This, then, is a completely separate programme from the ‘original’ Valkyrie programme, as Aston Martin Performance Technologies did not exist then.
The car is due to begin testing soon, in the second quarter of the year at an unspecified track. According to Motorsport.com, Aston Martin has been testing the Valkyrie AMR Pro, the track day car, to increase its understanding ahead of the full scale test programme later in the year.
Talking to Motorsport.com, Carter said: “It will be very intensive testing because the platform already exists so we can crack on and push hard with some very focused objectives.
“We have very clear objectives around what that testing is about.”
The Valkyrie will compete in both IMSA and WEC, one car in each series, with the programme run by the Heart of Racing team, Aston Martin’s factory partner for the project.
Heart of Racing already runs in WEC and IMSA, in the GTD and WEC’s GT category — formerly GTE, now LMGT3 in 2024 — with assistance from Prodrive, Aston Martin’s long term factory GT partner. However, Prodrive are not involved in the Valkyrie programme, the Aston Martin spokesperson confirmed.
The Valkyrie is a handsome machine, I hope it races as fast as it looks. I think we’ll see Alonso do Le Mans in one before too long.