Team Heart Of Racing has named the six drivers, who are going to drive the brand new Aston Martin Valkyrie LMH cars, which are going to compete this year in both the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship and the FIA World Endurance Championship.
Harry Tincknell and Alex Riberas were named as the first two drivers in the FIA WEC, when the entry list was announced back in November.
Tincknell will share car #007 with Tom Gamble through the full season. The team will only compete with two drivers through most of the season, but will call upon Ross Gunn as the third driver for the 24 Hours of Le Mans. So that will be an all-British line-up in the James Bond inspired race number.
Car #009 will be shared by Riberas and Marco Sørensen. The Spanish-Danish duo will have Roman De Angelis at Le Mans.
There is no news in regards to Gunn and De Angelis potentially competing in the 10 hours opening round in Qatar, or other FIA WEC rounds prior to Le Mans.
Graphics: The Heart Of Racing
But Ross Gunn and Roman De Angelis will share car #23 in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship, where they will make their season debut at the Sebring 12 hours. The team chose to skip the Daytona 24 hours, to be better prepared for the rest of the season.
There is no news about who will be alongside Gunn and De Angelis for the 12 hours – since two drivers are not allowed to do that race alone, without a third driver.
THOR will only run a single car in IMSA, since there is no demand for two cars, as there are in the FIA WEC.
Graphics: The Heart Of Racing
The team has released a bit more info regarding the car, which has a 6,5 liter V12 naturally aspirated engine, creating about 500kW, equal to 680 bhp. The car doesn’t have a hybrid system, opposite to all other current LMH and LMDh cars. We have previously seen Glickenhaus and Vanwall run without hybrid. That means that the car “only” will have rear wheel drive, just like the LMDh cars have. With the current spec, we only have Ferrari, Peugeot and Toyota with 4-wheel drive, once the hybrid system kicks in.
A lot of time has been spent on converting the car to LMH regulations. The Valkyrie model itself is a few years old, and was actually on the path to become one of the very first cars, for the brand new Hypercar regulations in 2021. But then the Aston Martin brand was bought by Lawrence Stroll, who moved the focus into Formula 1, where the Force India team near Silverstone was bought and renamed. The team has been working on the LMH version since July 2024, with more than 15,000 kilometers of testing at Donington Park, Silverstone, Vallelunga, Jerez, Bahrain, Qatar, Road Atlanta, Sebring and Daytona.
The FIA World Endurance Championship 2025 starts with Prologue with a two-day test, which is run on 21 and 22 February, before the race week itself starts on 26 February at the very same Lusail International Circuit in Qatar.
