Aston Martin’s new Valkyrie World Endurance Championship and IMSA SportsCar Championship contender has already notched up more than 6000km in testing since hitting the track last month.
The Le Mans Hypercar developed by the British manufacturer out of the Adrian Newey-inspired Valkyrie road car has racked up that distance, equivalent to 3700 miles, over the course of six days of testing on home ground in the UK and then in mainland Europe.
That started with a full day of testing at Donington Park two days after the completed Valkyrie AMR-LMH’s roll-out on the Silverstone Grand Prix Circuit on 16 July.
There was then a further day at Donington and two more at Silverstone before the programme moved to Aragon in Spain for a two-day test.
Aston Martin head of endurance racing Adam Carter expressed content with the testing so far with the Valkyrie, which will be run by the US-headquartered Heart of Racing team in both WEC and IMSA next year.
“We have set out a test programme with challenging and realistic objectives and we are going through the schedule ticking them off,” Carter told Autosport / Motorsport.com.
“So far we have accomplished 6000km and are very pleased with how it is going, but it is still early in what is going to be a long programme.”
Carter would not reveal who has driven the AMR-LMH so far in addition to the drivers who took the wheel of the car in the initial tests that preceded the release of the first photographs of the car.
Harry Tincknell, who is contracted to Valkyrie development partner Multimatic Motorsports, drove at the Silverstone shakedown before longtime Aston-contractee Darren Turner and HoR regular Mario Farnbacher took over for the first proper test at Donington.
Former Aston driver Stefan Mucke did the very first run of the car minus its completed bodywork on Silverstone’s Stowe layout early in July.
Carter revealed that Aston and the HoR team are looking beyond Aston Martin’s existing pool of GT drivers, which includes two-time GTE Pro WEC title winners Nicki Thiim and Marco Sorensen.
“Through the initial testing phase we will be leaning on the Aston Martin Racing roster to support us and we have started to have look at a few drivers from elsewhere as well,” he said.
HoR team principal Ian James insisted that no decisions have been made on who will race the three Valkyries next year — two in the WEC’s Hypercar class and one in GTP in IMSA - but he insisted that the “chemistry between the drivers” will be paramount as the line-ups are finalised.
“There are a lot of good drivers out there, but we want drivers who can leave the ego in the garage and do a solid job,” James told Autosport / Motorsport.com.
“That is what we are looking for, team players.”
Carter revealed that initial testing of the Valkyrie is also likely to encompass a trip to the Middle East where the WEC has two rounds in Bahrain and Qatar.
He stated that the development programme is on course to expand to the US when a second car comes on stream in the autumn as scheduled.
But he would not comment on whether the Valkyrie will make its race debut at the Daytona 24 Hours IMSA season-opener next January as outlined on the launch of Aston Martin’s comeback to the top flight of sportscar racing in October 2023.
IMSA has a so-called sanction test scheduled for Daytona in November at which competitors for the season ahead are obliged to participate.
Whether the Valkyrie would have to have completed its homologation by that test is, said Carter, “a point of discussion”.
Last December, the Lamborghini SC63 LMDh, the newcomer to IMSA’s GTP class ranks in 2024, took part in the corresponding test in homologated form even though it wasn’t scheduled to join the IMSA grid until the Sebring 12 Hours in March.
