It is for actual this time, we swear! Properly, Aston Martin does, anyway. That is proper: The British automaker formally introduced Wednesday that it’s going to run a racing prototype of its Valkyrie within the Hypercar class on the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 2025 — alongside a return to the very best tiers of endurance racing. In partnership with Coronary heart of Racing, Aston Martin says no less than one Valkyrie race automotive might be entered within the high Hypercar class of each the FIA World Endurance Championship (WEC) and the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championships (IMSA) from 2025. This implies the Valkyrie may even compete within the Rolex 24 and 12 Hours of Sebring.
“We’ve got been current at Le Mans because the earliest days,” stated Lawrence Stroll, govt chairman of Aston Martin Lagonda. “By means of these superb endeavours we succeeded in successful Le Mans in 1959 and our class 19 occasions over the previous 95 years. Now we return to the scene of these first triumphs aiming to jot down new historical past with a racing prototype impressed by the quickest manufacturing automotive Aston Martin has ever constructed.”
Per Aston Martin, greater than 240 drivers have represented the model at Le Mans over the course of the corporate’s 95-year historical past. And 19 of its automobiles have clinched class victories, however solely as soon as has the marque taken the highest spot on the general podium: Roy Salvadori and Carroll Shelby did it in 1959 with the DBR1.
Aston says the Valkyrie AMR Professional was initially developed to satisfy LMH hypercar class rules, signaling the automaker’s deal with motorsport’s premier race. Now, Aston Martin Efficiency Applied sciences has to place collectively competitors prototype Valkyries for racing inside WEC’s parameters. As soon as that is carried out, the ultimate prototypes might be homologated for the WEC Hypercar and IMSA GTP lessons forward of the 2025 season.
The corporate additionally took the chance to announce that it’s going to marketing campaign all-new GT3 and GT4 automobiles primarily based on the Vantage platform; these will conform to all present and new GT rule-sets, together with the new-for-2024 LMGT3 rules that substitute the outgoing GTE class in WEC. Aston expects these new automobiles to compete in WEC, IMSA and SRO-run GT World Problem Collection within the arms of buyer groups, who will be capable of buy the brand new GTs in time for the 2024 season.
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