Aston Martin’s Hypercar Is Ready for Le Man. Here’s What to Know.

Sure, there’s Daytona, Indianapolis, and Sebring. There’s Monaco and Monza. But when it comes to a test of automotive endurance, Le Mans is in a class of its own. First held in 1923, the 24 Hours of Le Mans is one of the world’s oldest races, and certainly one of the toughest, held around the clock in the otherwise sleepy region of Sarthe in northern France. It’s the race that saw Ford face off with Ferrari in the ‘60s, culminating in Henry repeatedly beating Enzo at his own game, which the latter had previously won six times in a row.

Now part of the FIA’s World Endurance Championship (WEC) series, the race has drawn an unparalleled number of manufacturers back into competition for 2025, from Peugeot to Porsche, Cadillac to Alpine, all in the hopes of being crowned the overall winner. Ferrari came back in 2023 and subsequently won Le Mans upon its return, then repeated the accomplishment in 2024—all with its 499P. It’ll be hoping for a hat trick this weekend, when the famed contest presents its 93rd edition.

This year, yet another manufacturer has joined the fold. Aston Martin has returned to the top Hypercar class with the Valkyrie, and that’s interesting news on a number of levels. Firstly, it’s where Aston Martin belongs. The marque has a long and storied history of racing at Le Mans, going back nearly 100 years when it first entered two AM415 “Internationals” in 1928. It won its first 1.5-liter-class race in 1931, and also secured four more wins across the decade. The 1950s was its finest period, winning the 3-liter class six times, and securing the first place overall in 1959 with Caroll Shelby and Roy Salvadori behind the wheel of the DBR1. Their running mates, Maurice Trintignant and Paul Frère, finished second in the sister car.

That 1959 win remains Aston Martin’s sole overall victory, something the marque hopes to change with its new Valkyrie AMR-LMH. Unique in that it’s the only machine in the Hypercar class to be based on a road-legal model, the race-trim Valkyrie has been codeveloped by stateside outfit The Heart of Racing. Built around the original Red Bull/Adrian Newey conceived Valkyrie road car, it features a similar overall design, with the same ground-effect aero enhancements that include cavernous “tunnels” on its undercarriage. Going back to Le Mans is undoubtedly a big moment for the brand. 

“Valkyrie’s debut in the 24 Hour of Le Mans is a key milestone both in the development of the car and the sporting history of the brand,” says Aston Martin CEO Adrian Hallmark. “Le Mans is the pinnacle of endurance motorsport and, perhaps, the most famous standalone race on Earth. It is only right that the Hypercar class of the field contains an Aston Martin.’’

The AMR-LMH version does, of course, differ from the Valkyrie it’s based on. Its carbon-fiber chassis has been optimized for race use, while the high-revving, naturally aspirated 6.5-liter Cosworth V-12 ditches the hybrid element of the road car. That makes it the only Hypercar-class vehicle on the grid to run without a hybrid system. While the road car has over 1,000 bhp, strict FIA regulations mandate that the race car is detuned to 680 bhp, with weight sitting at around 1,000 kg (about 2,204 pounds).

But it is the sound of the power plant that has already won fans over. Reminiscent of Formula 1 cars of the early 1990s, it screams up to the redline, completely unique among a field of smaller-engined turbo prototypes. When it comes to the engine’s soundtrack, the Valkyrie is rivaled only by the Cadillac entries, which have their own guttural V-8 rumble that shakes the ground as they pass.

While the Valkyrie has all the elements needed to succeed in competition, expectations have been rightfully muted. It is, after all, incredibly difficult to bring a race-winning car to a team’s first season, especially during a time when the field is so competitive.

“While we have always kept our expectations in check, given the unique nature of Valkyrie and the fact that we are a new team at Hypercar level, we are hitting our targets consistently,” says Ian James, team principal of Aston Martin THOR. “For Valkyrie’s debut at Le Mans, finishing with both cars, and with a points finish, would represent a supreme success for a program in its infancy. It’s important to keep in mind that Le Mans represents the first competitive 24-hour event for Valkyrie, and that the Circuit de la Sarthe throws up its own unique set of challenges that are hard to replicate anywhere else. We go into the event aware of what lays ahead of us.”

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Despite the reality check, Aston Martin has shown improvement in each race it’s entered. The team narrowly missed out on the points in Spa, while it finished in the top ten in every International Motor Sports Association (IMSA) race so far this year. Whether it will do so in Le Mans remains to be seen, but just having the British-American team line up on the most competitive WEC grid in history can only be a good thing.

Click here for more photos of the Aston Martin Valkyrie hypercar preparing for Le Mans.