The ride of the Valkyries: Aston Martin’s Hypercar is finally here

“As I drove down the pit lane for the first time, I noticed that everyone was looking at the car. I could see them turning their heads once they heard the engine,” Aston Martin THOR Team’s Harry Tincknell recounted to RACER after last week’s FIA World Endurance Championship Prologue test in Qatar. It's been a long time coming, but Aston Martin's Valkyrie Hypercar project has finally arrived.

Heart of Racing’s resurrection of the original shelved project from the brand has delivered a pair of stunning V12 screamers, which are set to grace the top classes in the FIA WEC and IMSA this year and the car's competitive journey all starts in earnest this week in the Gulf.

The Valkyries on-site in Lusail couldn’t have left a more impressive and lasting first impression, passing every eye and ear test with flying colors last week during the track time. They look magnificent and sound sublime. But Aston Martin’s crew assembled is well aware that races aren’t won on aesthetics and noise -- they know it’s time to get down to business.

The Valkyrie is arguably the first true Hypercar, which captures the essence of the original LMH regulation set as a full-on prototype derived from a road car. And it’s here to give Aston Martin its best chance since the 1950s to win the Le Mans 24 Hours overall.

The Aston Martin THOR team's Valkyries are the best example yet of the intended form of road-to-racing Hypercars. Fabrizio Boldoni/DPPI

The THOR team’s performance last week in testing didn’t set the world alight, but it did produce plenty of encouraging signs that its solution for this era can deliver the goods. The mileage total after 549 laps was impressive considering the stage this project is at and the peak pace achieved was no cause for concern.

As for reliability, aside from a few new-car-niggles and a glitch in FP1 that cost the team the odd chunk of track time, it’s been a positive visit to the Gulf thus far in that area too.

“We ran lots of laps, especially on the first day and tried all the scenarios,” Tincknell told RACER. “We managed race runs, qualifying runs and live on-track with competitors, which we hadn’t done yet. And it was the first time we’ve been running both cars on track at the same time. But it didn’t feel like that."

What’s perhaps most impressive, though, as the Aston Martin THOR Team and its band of staff from Multimatic prepare for Friday’s 1812km encounter, is the general atmosphere in the camp. It’s calm, and everyone has seemingly gelled together already.

Over the years, we’ve seen some historically chaotic debuts from factories at the top-end of sports car racing -- the ill-fated Aston Martin AMR-One back in 2011 and Nissan’s messy experiment with the GT-R LM NISMO spring to mind -- but this feels worlds apart from those attempts at glory.

“This is the best team environment and atmosphere I’ve ever been in,” Tincknell enthused. “There’s a lot of carryover with Multimatic staff from the Ford GT days for me too. I’ve got the same race engineer, Dave Wilks. George Howard-Chappell is here too, and he was the team principal back in the day, plus a number of mechanics that I knew from Ford GT and the Mazda DPi program.

“It’s good to have familiar and new faces, it’s a great mix. It’s been a lot of fun and once we get on the pace, it’s going to be amazing.

“Every kilometer we’re going to run in the race is going to be valuable. It’s a car you can push hard, it likes you to be on the limit and aggressive. It’s a less complex car than some of the other prototypes I’ve driven, but that’s not a bad thing.”

The Valkyrie's competitive debut has been as reliable so far as it has been vocally and visually impressive.

Beyond getting to grips with operating the car in a competitive setting, a big task on the to-do list over the past week has been bedding in the drivers new to the WEC, and indeed prototype racing. One of those is Ross Gunn, who is sharing No. 007 with Harry Tincknell and Tom Gamble and will compete with the outfit in GTP this year too as part of a dual role across WEC and IMSA.

“It’s kind of weird for me,” Gunn reflected. “When I first signed with Andrew Howard (an Aston Martin customer and owner of Beechdean Motorsport) to race an Aston Martin, I remember the time, the day, because I was out of racing and thought I might be looking for a normal job, or a role in coaching.

"But he gave me the chance, and we had a meeting on March 1, 2015, so it’s been 10 years on a journey since then. I’m so proud to be part of this brand and thankful for the support to get here.

“Luckily, it’s a good group, so the transition has been smooth,” he added when asked about his new drive. “Harry, I would say, is our kind of team leader because he has more Valkyrie mileage and has raced in Hypercar before. He’s very positive and we’re all pushing in the same direction. I’ve been used to the GT side and getting out the way -- now I’ve got to catch and pass GTs all the time and it’s amazing how few clear laps you get and how much trust you can place on the drivers.”

The best news of all is that there’s so much more to come from the Valkyrie as a package and the THOR Team. Once it leaves Lusail next week, all eyes are on its IMSA GTP debut in Sebring in just a couple of weeks. That will be followed by a true endurance test on the Floridian airfield as part of the pre-Le Mans check list.

“After Sebring we will roll into a 24-hour test, and see if we can survive around there with the IMSA car. It won’t be a straight simulation of a race -- it will be a mileage and time simulation,” Heart of Racing team principal Ian James revealed.

“I don’t want to jinx myself but the attention to detail on making the car reliable has been the highest priority by the team. I’m really impressed with the effort that the team has made in putting these things together. The only thing is, we don’t know what we don’t know yet!”

It’s as refreshing as it is exciting to be discussing a brand-new non-hybrid Hypercar powered by a heavily developed Cosworth V12 in 2025, during an era of sports car racing that’s been swamped with quieter turbo-powered motors. It’s a throwback of the best kind. But will the results match the ambition?

We're unlikely to get any answers this weekend, and we may still be searching for clues regarding this car's ultimate potential until the halfway mark of the season when the Balance of Performance values the FIA set can factor in data from multiple races. And that’s OK -- it means there are huge doses of excitement and intrigue still to come.