Aston Martin Valkyrie hypercar gallery: Racing's most beautiful car

Sports Car News

Monstrous yet beautiful, the Aston Martin Valkyrie is fighting its way up the sports car field with a screaming V12 – here's our exclusive photoshoot with the car

Aston Martin Valkyrie Le Mans Hypercar 1

To the point: Aston Martin Valkyrie is racing unreconstructed

Drew Gibson

In an age of shared platforms, homogenised design and focus group blandness, racing itself has fallen victim to a beige world.

Could you tell the difference between between the silhouette of one F1 car to another, or whether that’s an LMP2 car or an LMDh with some nifty bodywork on?

Mercifully the Aston Martin Valkyrie is Le Mans Hypercar has bucked this trend, and then some.

Designed by F1 design legend Adrian Newey in a collaboration with Red Bull, it’s a car which simultaneously manages to be all sharp edges as well as flowing, graceful lines. The screaming V12 monster has become a fan favourite since its debut at the start of this year.

“It’s most brutal piece of equipment you can imagine”

With two cars in the World Endurance Championship (featuring Le Mans) and one in the American IMSA series, the car has edged closer and closer to the far more experienced field – featuring Ferrari, Porsche, Cadillac and more – as it looks to become a regular points contender.

This weekend the Aston Martin squad heads to Interlagos for WEC’s 6 Hours of São Paulo, with the team hoping to now get up on score sheet.

Last month Motor Sport featured the Valkyrie in an exclusive photoshoot, as well as speaking to key team members helping to put Aston back to its rightful place in sports car racing.

“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,” says Aston’s head of endurance motor sport Adam Carter.

And he’s done it in style, as one of its drivers Harry Tincknell points out.

“The reaction from the fans, the look and the sound of the thing, is 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 [in season-opening Qatar] 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.

From the archive

“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.”

Team-mate Alex Ribeiras is no less emphatic in his experience of driving the Valkyrie.

He describes it 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.”

Its drivers will be hoping to tame the monster in Brazil this weekend on one of the most iconic tracks in world motor sport.