Callum Ilott at the Indy 500: my plan to break the Brickyard

Where do you start when your task is to interview a Formula 1 driver who is also a friend? To be clear, having worked in F1 for a third of a century, I am chummy with dozens of F1 drivers past and present. But I am close friends with only a few.

“So, Kev, I begin,” sitting in my study at home in London, seeing my old mate in front of me, on a Teams video link, driving through pretty roads in rural Denmark at the wheel of what appears not to be a supercar or anything like one, “what are you driving?”

“A Merc Sprinter van,” he replies. “I’m towing my new kart to a test session. It’s a proper gearbox kart, a quick one, and I’m going to enter the Danish Shifter Karting Championship in it.” And there you have it, in a nutshell. A 32-year-old veteran of 185 F1 grand prix starts Kevin Magnussen may be, but it is racing for its own sake that floats his boat. Yes, he loves Monte Carlo, but not for the mega-bucks or the super-yachts. “Monaco is fantastic in a modern F1 car. Massenet and Casino Square are an awesome challenge, almost unbelievably quick,” he says. If you want to make him happy, give him something with wheels and an engine and ask him to race it as fast as it’ll go.

Matt Bishop, McLaren chief of comms, offering Kevin Magnussen some avuncular advice in 2015

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How about a left-field opening question. “Are you aware that you hold two Formula 1 records?” I ask him.

“No, what are they?”

“Well, the first is that you scored 18 world championship points on your grand prix debut, which is a record, because others such as Jacques Villeneuve [second in Melbourne in 1996] and Giancarlo Baghetti [first at Reims in 1961] did what they did when the points scheme was different. Oh and you’re not going to like the second.”

“What is it?”

“Most grands prix started without leading a single lap. You top the list with 185. Martin Brundle is second on 158, by the way.”

GettyImagAt 16, Magnussen stormed Danish Formula Ford with 11 wins from 15 raceses-2199865899 — At 16, Magnussen stormed Danish Formula Ford with 11 wins from 15 races

There is a pause, then a chuckle. “Well, I guess my two F1 records accurately reflect how it was. That was my F1 career, wasn’t it? A great head start followed by a long tail end.” It was indeed.

In that great head start, on his F1 debut in Australia in 2014, Kevin finished third on the road, which became second after the disqualification of Daniel Ricciardo, to Nico Rosberg – who, like Magnussen, is the son of an F1 driver. But their childhoods could hardly have been less similar. Nico was born in Germany and raised in Monaco and Ibiza – the doted-on only child of his mother Sina and his father Keke, the 1982 F1 world champion turned successful businessman – and his upbringing benefited from not only parental love but also wealth, privilege and social advantage.

“I’d shown flashes of good form but I’d crashed too often”

“It wasn’t like that for me,” says Kevin. “We really didn’t have much money at all, because my parents were extremely young when I was born. My dad [Jan Magnussen] was 18 and my mum [Britt Peterson] was 17. You could say that when I was a baby they were only kids themselves. Although they were together for my early childhood, she stayed in Denmark to look after me while he went off to the UK to race in Formula Ford. I always say that me and my mum grew up together, because my dad was in England trying to get established as a teenage racing driver. I only saw him when he came back home from time to time.

“It was my uncle, Erik, my dad’s brother, who pushed me to race. He’d been helping my dad in his karting days – he’s a brilliant mechanic – and he’ll be helping me when I’ll be karting this year. Full circle, eh?

Dad Jan is on hand for Kevin after a DNF at Hockenheim in 2008’s ADAC Formel Masters

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“Erik taught me and his adopted son, my cousin Dennis [Lind, the GT driver], how to race. Me and Dennis are the same age, and Erik was mega-ambitious for us both, starting us at just two years old. He made us practise three times a week. Obviously I can’t remember it, but that’s what he tells me. And, by the time we were four or five, he was pushing us hard. Maybe not quite as hard as Jos [Verstappen] pushed Max, but not far off it. Erik used to stand next to the kart track, with his foot placed on the edge of it, indicating where we should brake for each corner. If we braked before the mark, he used to give us hell. If we braked after it, he wouldn’t mind at all, even if we crashed. He was hardcore. But it worked, because eventually we learned how to brake where he wanted us to brake and still get around the corner. And when we’d done that, he walked a metre closer to the corner and made us brake later still.”

I am reminded of what Trevor Carlin – who ran Magnussen in British Formula 3 in 2011, during which year they won seven races together – told me about him a few years ago. “Someone once asked me which driver Kevin’s driving style most reminded me of. I had a good think before I answered, then I replied truthfully: ‘Ayrton Senna.’ I particularly remember Kevin’s braking. No one I’ve worked with has ever stopped a racing car quite like Kev did.” We will examine exactly what that means later.

After British F3 in 2011 Magnussen moved up to the Formula Renault 3.5 Series in 2012, racing for Carlin again, and 2013, now with DAMS. In the first of those two seasons he won at Spa and finished second at Aragón and Hungaroring, and the next year he was champion, winning at Spa again, Aragón, Paul Ricard, Barcelona, and Barcelona again, and bagging eight further podium finishes.

By that time he had been a member of McLaren’s Young Driver Development Programme for three years, which is how he and I had first come into contact with each other, since, as McLaren’s then comms/PR chief since 2008, I took a great interest in the YDDP.

After finishing runner-up in Formula Renault 2.0 in 2009, Magnussen joined McLaren’s young driver programme

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“After 2012, when I’d won a Renault 3.5 race, I’d shown flashes of good form but I’d crashed too often, Martin [Whitmarsh, McLaren’s team principal] told me that I had to win the Renault 3.5 championship or he’d chuck me off the YDDP. But there was another YDDP member racing in the same championship that year, Stoffel [Vandoorne], and Martin said to us, ‘If one of you wins the championship, you’ll be racing for McLaren in F1 next year.’ So there was enormous pressure on both of us.

“I had the talent, I had the speed, but I needed support”

“I’d been dreaming of racing in F1 since I was a little kid. So in 2013 it felt like my life depended on winning. Honestly, that’s what it felt like. I remember thinking: ‘If I don’t win the championship this year, my life will be shit.’ So I gave it everything, absolutely everything. I won five races – six if you count the one I was disqualified from at Paul Ricard – and I remember one of the races at Hungaroring particularly well. It was raining unbelievably hard – F1 would never run in such weather these days – and qualifying had been interrupted four times, and I had a wheel hub problem, stopping me getting a proper quali lap in, so I started the race from P16. The safety car led the field for the first five laps, and after that I just cut loose. I left no margin anywhere, absolutely flat-out even as it began to rain even harder, and I ended up finishing second. When I passed Stoffel I remember feeling really good. That’s no criticism of him by the way. He’s a great driver and a nice guy. But obviously it was important that I beat him.”

McLaren’s drivers in 2013 were Jenson Button and Checo Pérez. Both were fine, talented wheelmen, and Button, then an ex-F1 world champion of 33, was particularly consistent, extracting the maximum out of our MP4-28, which was not a great car. Pérez, who was just 23, was less reliable, less affable, less polished and less disciplined – a shortfall which irked our chairman Ron Dennis,

Nonetheless, Whitmarsh offered Pérez a contract extension, intending that he would race alongside Button again in 2014. A number of us had hoped he would choose Magnussen instead. Three of us – sporting director Sam Michael, team doctor Aki Hintsa and I – lobbied Dennis to overrule Whitmarsh. In the end he did just that.

His dream move to F1 came in 2014 at McLaren as a replacement for Sergio Pérez; his first race, in Australia, made the record books

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“To be fair to Martin,” Magnussen reminds me, “he’d lined up a Force India drive for me in 2014, which he was able to do because McLaren was helping Force India with various technical inputs at the time. I even did a seat fit for them at their Silverstone factory. Then, one day in the autumn of 2013 when I was at Woking doing a simulator day, I became aware of a weird vibe. Sam passed me in a corridor and smiled at me in this really kind of meaningful way; then you did, too; then Aki texted me to say that good things were happening; then finally Anders [Holch Povslen, the Danish billionaire industrialist who had bankrolled Magnussen’s drives in feeder formulae] called me and said, ‘It’s changed. You’ll be racing for McLaren, not Force India. Ron and I have sorted it.’ I was thrilled.”

In January 2014 Whitmarsh resigned – his relationship with Dennis at a low ebb generally and having been countermanded on a key decision, namely driver selection – and Dennis, who had been chairman for some years, took back his old role of chief executive officer. From now on, he told us, McLaren would once again be his train set.

Magnussen’s last outing for McLaren was the 2015 season-opener in Australia; he was reserve for the rest of the year

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“The strange thing is, I didn’t feel a whole lot of pressure on the flight down to Melbourne for my first grand prix. I was still in my 2013 ‘I’ve got to win everything or else’ mindset, and I remember thinking to myself: ‘I’ve got to win this race.’ I didn’t win it – I finished third on the road, which ended up being second after Daniel’s disqualification – and, even though I knew that was a great result for a rookie on his F1 debut, I’d wanted more. But I enjoyed standing on the podium with Nico and Daniel, seeing and hearing tens of thousands of people shouting and cheering. It was an amazing moment. But I’d got used to winning and, well, I hadn’t won, had I?

“It was only after that race that I began to feel pressure. I remember Jonathan [Neale, managing director] and Éric [Boullier, racing director] telling me, ‘Lewis [Hamilton] was an average of 0.15sec faster than Jenson in qualifying over the three years they raced alongside each other, so, to retain your drive for next year, you should be aiming to beat Jenson by the same margin.’ I accepted it at the time but, looking back, it was unfair. Lewis and Jenson were both F1 world champions, far more experienced than I was, and Jonathan and Éric were telling me that if I wasn’t as good in my rookie season as Lewis had been in his third, fourth and fifth F1 seasons, I’d be out.

Testing of the 919 Hybrid LMP1 in November 2015 but more disappointment was to come for Kevin

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“That was crazy – and also disrespectful to Jenson. I was almost encouraged to regard him as easy to beat, to underestimate him in effect. Well, he was a really good driver. It so happens that in 2014, if you average out our qualifying performances, I did beat him by more or less what they’d asked me to beat him by, but in the races he was brilliant – wise, strategic, good with tyres, clever with weather. Now I wish I’d stood up for myself. I was naive. But, in my defence, I was an F1 new boy. Inevitably, that unfair weight of expectation heaped unnecessary pressure on me, and I began to make mistakes.

“It was a ridiculous set of expectations to push onto a 21-year-old rookie. I had the talent, I had the speed, but I needed support mentally and emotionally, and the senior McLaren management on the racing side offered the opposite.

“And then Jenson and I learned that Fernando [Alonso] would be joining the team for 2015, which meant that obviously one of us was going to get the chop. In late 2014 there was a boardroom meeting to decide who’d race for the team in 2015, and the vote went seven-two in my favour. Only Mansour [Ojjeh] and [Shaikh] Mohammed [Bin Essa Al Khalifa] voted for Jenson. They’d been lobbied cleverly by Jenson’s manager, Richard [Goddard]. Together, Mohammed and Mansour had a majority shareholding, so they used that power to overrule everyone else, including Ron, who’d voted for me, and in 2015 I ended up being the reserve driver, which meant nothing really.

Magnussen is now racing for WRT BMW in the WEC

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“But Ron said, ‘Trust me, you’ll race for us in 2016, or maybe even before the end of the 2015 season.’ And, honestly, I think he was being sincere. That really was his plan for me. So, when Williams contacted my then manager Dorte [Riis Madsen] about me racing for them in 2016, I talked to Éric about it, and he said, ‘No, stay with us, you’ll race for us with Fernando next season.’ And, honestly, I think he was being sincere, too. So, reassured by both Ron and Éric, I didn’t pursue the Williams option.

“But I became depressed in 2015, I don’t mind admitting that. I lived to race, and I wasn’t racing. I had an offer to do some Super Formula races in Japan, which would have been cool, but Ron said I shouldn’t. In 2016, when Stoffel was the McLaren reserve driver, Ron let him race in Super Formula, and he loved it, winning a couple of races, so I don’t know why Ron didn’t allow me to do the same thing the year before, but anyway he didn’t.”

“I’d gone from F1 to watching my mate race a Porsche at Le Mans”

Increasingly bored as his torpid 2015 wore on, Magnussen began to amuse himself by doing slightly silly things. He spent the Thursday before the Spanish Grand Prix sunbathing on the beach in Barcelona, he fell asleep, and he appeared in the paddock on the Friday comically sunburned. Neale and Boullier were furious. He went to the Le Mans 24 Hours race with some of his mates, travelling there in a Volkswagen campervan. En route they rented motorbikes one afternoon. Kevin fell off his bike and injured his leg. When they got to Le Mans, he sat among regular fans on the outside of the Dunlop Curve, still in pain, drinking beer. “I remember sitting there, seeing my mate Michael [Christensen] go by, lap after lap, and wondering how I’d gone from racing a McLaren in F1 to watching my mate race a Porsche at Le Mans in just a few months. It was then that I thought to myself, ‘What have I become? I simply must get a grip of the situation and find a way to race in F1 next year, because nothing is certain at McLaren, and if I don’t get a McLaren drive next year I may never race in F1 again, whatever Ron or Éric tell me.’”

with Renault for 2016 in F1 — With Renault for 2016 in F1

Bad luck continued to dog him. There was a nightclub fracas on the eve of the Chinese Grand Prix, resulting in an early flight home. Then, listless while in Denmark, he was offered a day’s testing on a speedway bike – “just for fun” – but he fell off it, injuring his hand. I think he told Neale and Boullier a white lie about that mishap – “I fell off a bike while training” – allowing them to assume erroneously that it had been a mountain bike. But, even so, the scuttlebutt at Woking was now that Kevin was becoming something of a wild child, a bit frivolous and too accident-prone.

The truth was that Magnussen was but a pawn in a very complicated chess game. Dennis was angry that, although he was the chief executive officer, he had been overruled on driver selection – ironically just as Whitmarsh had been at his, Dennis’s, behest 12 months before – and he wanted to right what he saw as that wrong by pairing Alonso with Magnussen instead of Button in 2016. But boardroom politics are always tricky; McLaren’s boardroom was highly political at that time; and perhaps Ron was not fully aware that he was beginning to lose control of the company, but he was, and he was eventually removed by the board before the end of 2016. Kevin was (in)famously sacked on October 5, 2015, his 23rd birthday, via an email sent by Dennis’s personal assistant Justine Bowen, which was not Ron’s finest hour.

“But I’d had a test with Porsche, an LMP1 shoot-out against a number of other drivers, and I’d done well in it, even though my hand was still painful after my speedway shunt, and I thought, ‘It’s OK, I can be a Le Mans driver for Porsche, just like Michael.’ I got the drive, and I was all set to race for Porsche in 2016 – but then ‘diesel-gate’ happened at the end of 2015 and Porsche pulled the car I should have been in. I felt very lost. I’d almost given up on life. Then Toto [Wolff] called me and offered me a Mercedes DTM test – another shoot-out against a number of other drivers – and again I did well. Gary [Paffett], who’d won a ton of DTM races, was there to set a benchmark lap time, and I beat him, so Toto offered me the drive for 2016.”

celebrating with IMSA Ganassi team-mate in Detroit in 2021 — Celebrating with IMSA Ganassi team-mate in Detroit in 2021

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Suddenly, another option materialised – a drive for what had recently been the Lotus F1 team but was now about to be renamed Renault again, replacing Pastor Maldonado, who had raced (and often shunted) for the team in 2014 and 2015. Kevin made Toto aware that he had a chance of an F1 drive after all – and, to Wolff’s credit, he allowed him to go for it, reassuring him that his Mercedes DTM offer would be waiting if the Renault opportunity came to naught.

He got the Renault drive. In February 2016, on the evening of the opening day of the first pre-season test, I had dinner with him at El Trabuc in Granollers, which is near Circuit de Catalunya. He was visibly excited about the year ahead and it was clear that a weight had been lifted from his shoulders. I hoped – and believed – that he would carve out a long future for himself at Renault, but the RS16 chassis was a bitter disappointment and, although he outperformed his team-mate Jolyon Palmer, things never quite gelled for him there. “They offered me a contract extension for 2017,” he remembers now, “but I’d seen Carlos’s dad [Carlos Sainz Sr] going in and out of the motorhome quite a lot, so I thought Carlos would probably join the team soon, which he did, so I reckoned that I’d have only one more year there at best.”

I remember that time very well,” I reply. “And when Guenther [Steiner] contacted you, and offered you a Haas drive, and you told him you’d consider it if he matched the money Renault had offered you, and Guenther said yes even though that constituted twice as much money as he’d offered you initially, and you WhatsApped me to tell me all of the above, I remember how I replied. ‘Get your arse in the Haas.’”

“That’s right,” says Kevin, “I remember, and I did exactly that, and I had four years at Haas then. The first two years, 2017 and 2018, were good. I scored points quite often, I made a decent amount of money with all those points bonuses, I had a quick team-mate, Romain [Grosjean], who I used to beat, and I was happy. And early in 2018 I began to drive the Ferrari in the Maranello F1 simulator, in secret, and I did that well, and the Ferrari guys began to take an interest in me. Their drivers were Seb [Vettel] and Kimi [Räikkönen], and they were eyeing up Charles [Leclerc] for 2019. He was racing for Sauber or Alfa Romeo or whatever it was called in 2018, and he started the season badly. But in Baku he raced well to sixth, then he began to score a lot of points after that, and I realised that they were going to go for him, not me.

“I’d like to race in WEC for the next 15 years and win at Le Mans”

“As regards getting my arse into a car better than a Haas, I don’t think I yet realised that my ship had sailed, but I guess it had. Also, the next two years, 2019 and 2020, were less good. Our Haas car wasn’t as competitive or as reliable as it had been before, and then they needed pay drivers for 2021, so they went for Nikita [Mazepin] and Mick [Schumacher]. I was out of F1.”

Geopolitics came to his aid, however: “Putin invaded Ukraine, and that meant that Nikita was out of a Haas drive because he was Russian, and I was back in. Finishing fifth in Bahrain in 2022 on my F1 comeback was mega. But it was really hard to get out of the 2022 WEC contract that I’d just signed for Peugeot, and I had to pay them quite a bit to walk away from it.

“Anyway, by 2024 I wasn’t enjoying Haas, or F1, any more. I didn’t like the new breed of ground-effect cars with low-profile tyres. They don’t suit my driving style, which is to carry as much speed into a corner as I can and brake as I turn in. Also I have a wife and two daughters now and, well, if you do 24 grands prix every year you’re hardly ever at home.”

Halfway through 2024 Kevin announced he would be leaving Haas at the end of year. The remainder of his time with the team was a mixed bag; promising performances dovetailed with mistakes, bad luck and even a one-race ban after an accumulation of penalty points on his superlicence. It was an unfitting end to his time in F1.

A brilliant fifth in Bahrain with Haas on the first race of the 2022 season would be Magnussen’s highest finish of the year

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A third act begins this year, however. “I’m doing a WEC programme with BMW, plus three great IMSA races. I’ve driven at Daytona and Sebring, with Petit Le Mans [at Road Atlanta] to come. It’s perfect. Those races mean a lot to me, because I used to go to them when I was a kid, to support my dad when he was racing in them. I’d like to race in WEC for the next 15 years. Obviously, I’d love to win at Le Mans. If I did that, I think it would be every bit as good as winning in F1, which of course I never did.”

Four years ago he competed in the French classic alongside his dad. “It was cool to get the chance to drive alongside my father [and Anders Fjordbach] at Le Mans in 2021. I looked up to my dad so much as a kid, so to get the chance to compare my own driving with his in the same car at the same time on the same circuit was quite surreal. Looking through the data and comparing my laps with his, and seeing the details of our driving styles, was fascinating. I feel lucky to have had the opportunity to stand in the pitlane at Le Mans, ready for driver change, and have my dad jump out of the car that I’m about to get into.”

A little bit older, a little bit wiser – now Magnussen has set his heart on winning the Le Mans 24 Hours

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Next month he will line up alongside Raffaele Marciello and Dries Vanthoor in the WRT BMW team at Le Mans: “It’s the big one for all the Hypercar teams and drivers. We have a chance of winning it this year. The thing is, so do most of the Hypercar field. Everyone is so competitive that the result will be decided by the small details of how we execute the race. I wouldn’t be surprised if we see more than half the field on the lead lap at the end, fighting for the win.”

He pauses, and then, to my immense joy after all the ups and downs I have witnessed him go through over the past decade, adds, “I’m really, really looking forward to it.”

Born: 05/10/1992, Roskilde, Denmark

2008 Moves from karting to the Danish Formula Ford Championship; wins title.
2009 Finishes second, behind António Félix da Costa, in Formula Renault 2.0.
2011 Drives for Carlin in British F3; ends the year second behind Felipe Nasr.
2012-13 Two years in Formula Renault 3.5 Series; seventh in ’12, champion in ’13.
2014-15 Moves to F1 with McLaren; finishes second on his debut; ends the season in 11th. Reserve driver in ’15.
2016 With Renault in F1; 16th in the standings. Best finish, seventh (Russia).
2017-20 Haas calls. Best season 2018, finishing ninth, with two fifth-place finishes.
2021 With Ganassi in the IMSA SportsCar Championship; also Le Mans 24 Hours debut alongside dad Jan.
2022-24 Return to Haas, but struggles for points, finishing 13th, 19th and 15th.
2025 Endurance racing with BMW.

Callum Ilott at the Indy 500: my plan to break the Brickyard

In one regard – and it’s one that really shouldn’t be dismissed – Aston Martin is guaranteed a sure-fire hit even before its new Valkyrie racing car has turned a wheel at the Le Mans 24 Hours. That’s because the mean, green machine you see in all its considerable glory here, and which is already hard at work racking up racing miles in both the World Endurance Championship and the North American IMSA SportsCar series, looks certain to be a new fan favourite when the 24 Hours rolls around come June. And not just with the British contingent. Just look at it. What’s not to love?

Aston Martin Valkyrie top rear — With just a few races under its belt, Aston’s Valkyrie is already a fan favourite

Drew Gibson

Then there’s the dazzling, yet also endearingly flawed heritage behind that winged badge. Aston Martin is sewn into the fabric of Le Mans history – for better and for worse. And best of all, the bit our stunning pictures can’t put across: that certain sound. Odin’s V12 thunder will boom across the Circuit de la Sarthe thanks to the Valkyrie, when the 62-car field is unleashed for the 93rd Le Mans 24 Hours on June 14. Who’d have thought an old-school, pure-bred V12 would still be the favoured choice for a high-profile manufacturer attack on the great race, in 2025? That’s got to warm the heart.

So yes, we love it already. At the same time, for all the aesthetics and emotion, racing cars are ultimately judged on cold, hard results. The big question that matters, then – and as always is: will the Valkyrie Hypercar prove to be a winner?

Aston Martin Valkyrie bonnet — A Hypercar, yes, albeit not as powerful as the road-going Valkyrie

Drew Gibson

Not yet perhaps. But speak to the key players, from the suitably named Aston Martin THOR team entrusted to run it and the six drivers who will pedal it, and you sense a hard-edged optimism laced with gritty realism mixed within the touchy-feely stuff. Finally, after decades of intermittent plucky efforts – the Group C AMR1 of 1989, the Lola-based Aston Martin DBR1-2 of 2009 (not to mention the odd disastrous misfire such as the ill-conceived AMR-One of 2011) – Britain’s most charismatic sports car manufacturer might just have a palpable and genuine shot at a first overall Le Mans win since the exulted heroics of Roy Salvadori, Carroll Shelby and DBR1 way back in 1959. Just don’t expect it all to come together at the first time of asking this year.

Aston Martin Valkyrie engine — No hybrid here, just a 6.5-litre naturally aspirated V12.

Drew Gibson

The Valkyrie pitch has some punch. This is the only car built to the Le Mans Hypercar rulebook also adopted by Ferrari, Toyota and Peugeot that is contesting both the WEC and IMSA series, and of all 10 manufacturers currently committed to modern endurance racing’s thriving top tier it’s also the only model derived from a street car – although as one of its British drivers Harry Tincknell correctly points out, “The Valkyrie is not just any road car.” Originally conceived in 2016 as the ultimate production-based extreme performance car largely by Adrian Newey (never one to have much patience with the concept of compromise), the Valkyrie model wasn’t created specifically to win Le Mans. Yet much like Gordon Murray and his McLaren F1 from three decades ago, Newey couldn’t have devised his creation without the thought of racing guiding his hand, consciously or otherwise. As Adam Carter, Aston’s head of endurance motor sport, puts it: “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.”

Carroll Shelby, Aston Martin DBR1, Le Mans 1959

Now the Valkyrie will attempt to echo the McLaren F1 GTR’s achievement from precisely 30 years ago by transferring directly from the road to victory at the world’s most illustrious and famous endurance motor race. If it does so, if not this year then at some point before the end of the decade, one could argue it would be the ultimate validation for the whole concept of Hypercar and GTP as endurance racing’s premier class. After all, in the wake of the out-of-this-world LMP1 exotica that previously ruled Le Mans, the point of Hypercar in the first place was to create a top class that was relatable to the proverbial man on the street. The original Valkyrie itself was the inspiration for everything we now have and enjoy, and indeed should have been on the first Hypercar grids in 2021 – only for the pause button to be pressed in February 2020 amid a(nother) period of management upheaval at Aston Martin. There was a sense of inevitably when Lawrence Stroll released the play button in October 2023. This car was meant to race at Le Mans – even when it wasn’t.

Aston Martin Valkyrie’s WEC debut Qatar 1812Kms. — The Valkyrie’s WEC debut was February’s Qatar 1812Kms.

“The Valkyrie hypercar is a moment in time in automotive history, and as part of that moment in time, it very much should also race to underline and cement its place in automotive history and its technological achievement,” says Carter with meaning. “By adhering to the Hypercar rules, it’s got a strong association to the DNA of that road car.”

“The familiar No007 entry nods to the still-valued Aston/James Bond association”

In relation to Newey’s original vision, that’s why the racing Valkyrie – on which it should be said the F1 designer has played no part – remains a pure-blood racer: no hybrid complexity, just straight, refreshing power from a modified version of the Cosworth-built 6.5-litre naturally aspirated V12 engine, with an accent on lean-burn efficiency. The V12 in so-called ‘standard’ road-going form (ha!) revs to 11,000rpm and develops over 1000bhp. The irony is in racing spec it won’t produce anywhere near that much because it’s not allowed to. By regulation, the racer – which shares more in common with the AMR Pro track day version than the original base model – is limited to 520kW (697bhp) within the Balance of Performance framework which is at the heart of Hypercar and which allows varying concepts under parallel rulebooks, LMH and LMDh, to race in apparent harmony.

Aston Martin Valkyrie at Sebring — In IMSA, the Valkyrie made its first appearance in Round 2 at Sebring.

But even with less power, won’t the Valkyrie’s evolution from a road car, pitched against rivals with bespoke racers designed without street legality in mind, be at a disadvantage? In theory, no – again because of the way Hypercar has been conceived. “The performance is limited by the regulations, irrespective of development,” explains Carter. “There’s a minimum weight, a power limitation through driveshaft torque control and an aerodynamic performance window. Every competitors’ car gets measured in a full-size wind tunnel. So it’s about optimising the characteristics of the Valkyrie within the fundamental performance contributors.”

The Valkyrie heads to Le Mans less than a year after it first turned a wheel in anger. Developed in collaboration between the new Silverstone-based Aston Martin Performance Technologies, The Heart of Racing (that’s what THOR stands for) and prolific specialist Multimatic Motorsports, the car embarked on its testing campaign in July last year and is said to have topped 15,000km (9320 miles) of running from initial shakedowns at Donington Park and Silverstone, then on to Vallelunga and Jerez, before continuing in Bahrain, Qatar, Road Atlanta, Sebring and Daytona.

THOR is the US-based creation of Gabe Newell, who gets a lot of the credit for making this project a reality, and British expat Ian James, who Motor Sport first encountered 30 years ago when he was a serious-minded Formula Renault racer plying his trade in a thing called a Ronta – designed and built by a certain chap called Ron Tauranac. James subsequently emigrated and quietly built a formidable stateside reputation as first a highly dependable endurance racer, then as an increasingly accomplished team owner. He describes the project he now leads as a “pinch-me moment”.

Aston Martin Valkyrie — In 2019, Aston was the first manufacturer to add its name to the Hypercar roster but cancelled in 2020; it reversed its decision in late 2023

James signed half a dozen drivers familiar to him to lead the Valkyrie into battle: four for the two-car WEC campaign, two for the solo entry in IMSA. Five of the six are known THOR quantities having been drawn from its GT ranks. Even the ‘interloper’, experienced hand Tincknell, has been folded into this project from the start. The 33-year-old was earmarked for the original, cancelled Valkyrie racing project, has plenty of miles under him in the AMR Pro, has a long association with Multimatic and is even an Aston Martin Le Mans winner. One of his two class wins at the 24 Hours was achieved in a Vantage AMR in the old GTE Pro category back in 2020.

“The DNA of the car and the feel it offers gives me a lot of optimism that it will be successful”

In WEC, an all-British crew occupies the familiar No007 entry that nods to the still-valued Aston/James Bond association, with Tincknell joined by rising star Tom Gamble; in No009 are a pair of trusted THOR GT aces, Dane Marco Sørensen and Spaniard Alex Riberas. Briton Ross Gunn and Canadian Roman De Angelis arrive from the blue IMSA Valkyrie, with Gunn completing a patriotic three-driver No007 line-up for Le Mans and the other longer WEC races, and De Angelis the addition to No009.

Ahead of Le Mans and at the time of writing, the Valkyrie had raced twice. Its world debut came in the WEC season opener, with all six drivers on hand for the 10-hour Qatar 1812Kms, the first occasion THOR had run two cars together. Testing is all very well, but there’s nothing like race mileage to uncover a car’s true status. No one was surprised that it proved a modest debut as new-car bugs reared their heads. Sørensen was at the wheel of No009 in the second hour when the driver’s door unlatched because it had not been shut properly at a pitstop, and it then blew off as he returned to the pits a tad too fast. Nevertheless, the car made it to the chequered flag, 23 laps down on the winning Ferrari 499P. As for the British No007, gearbox trouble forced an early bath after 181 laps.

Although Adrian Newey wasn’t involved with the Valkyrie racing project, there’s a bit of him in this car

Drew Gibson

The following month Valkyrie took its IMSA bow at the Sebring 12 Hours. Gunn and De Angelis, joined in Florida by Riberas, qualified 12th and finished a respectable ninth on Sebring’s bumps, in what is recognised as one of the most gruelling races in the world. The trio found themselves limited to single stints in the Florida heat and the rough track surface highlighted key areas for development in suspension damping, but a top-10 finish was a reasonable return at this stage.

Aston Martin Valkyrie vents — Inside the cockpit, systems have run smoothly in ’25.

Tincknell offers a driver’s snapshot of where the car is at. “Qatar we knew was going to be a huge learning experience,” he says. “It was the first time the team had come together with two cars and two sets of crew and all the drivers. We were really happy with how well the car ran at the Prologue and went into the race with the aim to get one car to the finish. We achieved that with the No009. The team faced typical new-car issues – funny how they always appear in the race when you haven’t had them through testing! But for us every single lap of data was vital for the rest of the year. We knew we wouldn’t need to build a new trophy cabinet just for Qatar, but the DNA of the car and the feel it offers gives me a lot of optimism that it will be successful.”

Aston Martin Valkyrie gear sticks — Testing of the race version started just a year ago

Tincknell is proud to take his place in Aston Martin history and especially enjoys the Valkyrie’s most notable characteristic. When he wasn’t driving in Qatar, he says there were times when it seemed there were only two cars out there, such was the dominant sonic boom from the two V12s. “The reaction from the fans, the look and the sound of the thing, was awesome,” he says. “As a driver you are selfish and you want everything immediately. We’ve had to manage our own expectations and I said before the weekend we’d be a lot closer in the race than in qualifying – we just hadn’t done any qualifying sims ever before, and understanding the tyre over one peak lap is still something we need to do. But at certain points in the race we were one of the quickest cars on track, which is hugely encouraging.”

Aston Martin Valkyrie labels — “Hand built in Great Britain”

Drew Gibson

Tincknell is unique among the sextet because he has solid Hypercar experience in another make, model and type: the Porsche 963 LMDh he raced for the privateer Proton team over the past season and a half. So we have to ask: how does the Valkyrie compare? “It’s something I’ve been asked a lot,” he admits. “I was speaking to Phil Hanson about this as well because he’s gone from the Porsche to the Ferrari for this year. It does feel like a different category, LMDh versus LMH. There is definitely a different philosophy and way of driving them. The Aston is very pure, shall we say, and ultimately less complicated. Potentially more natural but at the same time you have that bit more weight compared to the LMDh cars and you feel that in the corners. You also have less adjustability [without a hybrid system]. These cars are quite sensitive and obviously in endurance racing the conditions are always changing, as you go into the cold of the night, then the sun comes out and it warms up. Having less adjustability is something we have to get used to.

“But that doesn’t mean LMDh is better. Sometimes you are managing issues caused by the complexity of the hybrid system rather than necessarily using it to your advantage. It’s difficult to compare to the Porsche but I very much like the feel of the Aston, and from the moment I drove it I knew this is the car I want to be in.”

“I like the feel of the Aston. From the moment I drove it I knew this is the car I want to be in”

Alex Riberas, the 31-year-old Spaniard in the No009 car, has relished the experience of adapting from GTs to Hypercar. He describes the Valkyrie as “the most brutal piece of equipment you can imagine driving around a race track with four wheels attached to it. It is a raw design: V12 naturally aspirated with no hybrid. The electronics play a much smaller role than in most race cars and even most road cars. It gives you immediate feedback on everything you do and at the same time you also feel that you can never underestimate how powerful it is and you always have to respect it. As soon as you think you are over the learning curve and you have it under control that’s when it bites you back.”

Aston Martin Valkyrie rear wing — This season is a learning curve for the Aston THOR team

Its road car roots have not been lost, according to Riberas. “You can feel it without a doubt,” he says. “I have driven the Valkyrie AMR Pro on several track days and you can feel the essence of the car in the driving. It’s not only visually; when you drive it there are a lot of similarities in the car behaviour. That’s special because the car at Le Mans is a similar spec to the car on the road.”

For Ross Gunn, the 28-year-old Brit in the IMSA entry who completes the No007 line-up at Le Mans, Sebring represented a clear step on from what Aston Martin THOR had taken from Qatar. Maintaining that progression, each time the car hits the track, is the target between now and June, and then beyond to the end of the WEC and IMSA seasons.

Aston Martin Valkyrie interior steering wheel — There’s an excitement around Aston’s return to top-class endurance racing – and fairy tales can come true at Le Mans, as Ferrari exhibited in 2023

Drew Gibson

“There is still a lot of improvement to make with dampers and shock absorbers,” says Gunn on the Sebring lessons. “Eventually and hopefully we can have something more driver friendly that isn’t so easy to spike the traction control. But in terms of inside the cockpit, the systems, the electric starter and so on, they ran smoothly, which is a big job in itself. We struggled in Qatar but improved by Sebring. It was encouraging. There were periods in the race when we could hang on to top competitors and that was a big surprise to a lot of us.”

So what should we expect for Le Mans? Naturally, there’s plenty of excitement to take this car to the Big One, but the drivers are not about to get carried away. Fan-favourite status will only carry them so far and they stick to a line that’s almost a team mantra: respect for our many rivals comes first, especially as Aston Martin is playing catch up.

Aston Martin Valkyrie wheels — Aston Martin Valkyrie

Riberas perhaps sums it up best. “We are going to Le Mans with the goal of finishing the race. If we are able to do that given the amount of time we have with the car, if we are able to see the chequered flag and run a smooth race, that would equal success in my opinion. But obviously in this world we are all super-competitive and always look at the lap times, wanting to be better and stronger and closer to the top.

“The most important thing is we learn as much as possible from this year’s edition because that will give us the best chance of winning Le Mans sooner rather than later.”

Aston Martin Valkyrie Spec

Chassis Carbon monocoque
Engine 6.5-litre V12 naturally aspirated
Power 680bhp
Transmission Xtrac seven- speed sequential, rear-wheel drive
Brakes Alcon 6-piston front and rear calipers, AP Racing carbon discs/pads
Suspension Double wishbone suspension front and rear, pushrod actuated torsion bar springs front and rear with adjustable side and central dampers
Wheels Forged aluminium 12.5x18in front, 14x18in rear
Tyres Michelin Pilot Sport 29/71 – 18 front, 34/71 – 18 rear
Weight 1030kg without driver and fuel (permitted minimum)

Callum Ilott at the Indy 500: my plan to break the Brickyard

Callum Ilott at the Indy 500: my plan to break the Brickyard

1. Perfect Palou

2. All eyes on the treble

3. Hélio out for record

4. Can Scott be great?

5. Herta’s choice

6. Hybrid debut

7. Winners on the up

8. Two races, one day

9. Bump Day drama

Callum Ilott at the Indy 500: my plan to break the Brickyard

Callum Ilott at the Indy 500: my plan to break the Brickyard

Callum Ilott at the Indy 500: my plan to break the Brickyard

Callum Ilott at the Indy 500: my plan to break the Brickyard

Callum Ilott at the Indy 500: my plan to break the Brickyard

Callum Ilott at the Indy 500: my plan to break the Brickyard

Born: 05/10/1992, Roskilde, Denmark

Callum Ilott at the Indy 500: my plan to break the Brickyard

Callum Ilott at the Indy 500: my plan to break the Brickyard

Callum Ilott at the Indy 500: my plan to break the Brickyard

LMGT3: A grand entry

Callum Ilott at the Indy 500: my plan to break the Brickyard

Callum Ilott at the Indy 500: my plan to break the Brickyard

1. Ferrari goes for the hat-trick

2. Toyota looking for legacy victory

3. Porsche aims for the big one

4. Cadillac’s time to shine

5. BMW on the up

6. Racing for French pride

7. A new qualifying format

8. Mercedes is back

9. And LMP2…

Callum Ilott at the Indy 500: my plan to break the Brickyard

007

009

Callum Ilott at the Indy 500: my plan to break the Brickyard

Aston Martin Valkyrie Spec

Callum Ilott at the Indy 500: my plan to break the Brickyard

Callum Ilott at the Indy 500: my plan to break the Brickyard