Aston Martin to Compete in WEC and IMSA with V12 Valkyrie LMH

If you heard the Valkyries running at Secret Meet last year, you probably thought something along the lines of this: “Why don’t racing cars sound like that anymore?!”. Well, they’re about to, because Aston Martin is going racing this year with a V12-powered Le Mans Hypercar, funnily enough named Valkyrie, and here it is.

Set to race in the World Endurance Championship including the 24 Hours of Le Mans and IMSA, the Valkyrie LMH is a collaboration between Aston Martin Performance Technologies and Heart of Racing, and makes no bones about its intention of aiming for the overall top spot at Le Mans for the first time since the DBR1 took top spot in 1959.

Unlike Ferrari, Porsche and Peugeot’s bespoke LMH cars, the Valkyrie of course has its roots in a production car — if you can really call a Valkyrie that — and sporting a naturally-aspirated V12, should bring back some aural nostalgia for those who watched the likes of the McLaren F1 GTR and Mercedes CLK GTR race in the ‘90s.

The Valkyrie’s Cosworth V12, which produces 1,000hp in production form, but has been massively detuned to a mere 680hp to comply with racing regulations, and accordingly, doesn’t need to rev as high as the production car’s 11,000rpm redline. Those two facts speak of just how wild the production Valkyrie is, the engineers’ wildest dreams unburdened by racing regulations.

The original Valkyrie was famously designed by Adrian Newey, so it was already an aerodynamically impressive machine, but the LMH takes it to another level with a huge fixed rear wing, the central spine running from the cockpit to the wing and more aggressive front-end aero as well as racing features like quick-change bodywork, rapid refuelling coupling and pneumatic jacks.

Whilst of course a whole lot more extreme, the Valkyrie road and race cars are perhaps as close together as we’ve seen for many years, likely helped by Newey’s input, as said by Adam Carter, Head of Endurance Motorsport for Aston Martin: “It would be almost unimaginable for Adrian, one of the greatest racing car designers in history, to design a car and not think about it going racing at some point”.

Aston CEO Adrian Hallmark said, “This is a proud moment for Aston Martin. To be returning to the fight for overall honours at the 24 Hours of Le Mans exists at the very core of our values and marks a key milestone in our motor racing heritage. As the only hypercar born from the road to challenge at the top of sports car racing in both the WEC and IMSA, the Valkyrie is an embodiment of our enduring sporting ethos, one that has defined the brand for more than a century”.

So, the Mulsanne straight should be alive with the sound of music this year, with the Valkyrie’s screaming V12, the Cadillac V-Series.R’s thunderous V8 and the ever-present howling flat-sixes of the Porsche 911s. If you miss how racing used to sound, you’ll certainly want to pay attention this year.