Harry Tincknell comes to the 24 Hours of Le Mans 2025 with another new cap on. This year, he is back with Aston Martin, where he is driving the brand new Valkyrie Hypercar in car #007.
Tincknell won at his very first outing back in 2014 with JOTA Sport in LMP2, moving on to Nissan in LMP1 for one year, four years with Ford Chip Ganassi Racing in GTE Pro, one year with Aston Martin in GTE Pro, where he won this race and narrowly missed out on the championship, then doing a mix of Proton Competition and Dempsey-Proton Racing in GTE Am in their extra entry, before moving into their Porsche 963 Hypercar for the 2024 season.
Racing24-7.net met him during the scrutineering in town, and started out giving him a slightly cheeky question.
Another Le Mans, another car for you. Have you ever done two Le Mans with the same team and the same car?
“I did four years in the Ford GT (he said with a big smile on his face). But otherwise it’s been quite a mix. Yeah, it’s been quite a mix. It’s been very varied, but I’ve really enjoyed it.”
“It doesn’t feel like 12 years ago I was here for the first time in the LMP2. Good memories from that, and great to be back with Aston. Having had great memories with them in 2020. It feels great, that I’ve been able to do this race consecutively every year. One of my personal goals, is to do 20 in a row. So I can’t believe we’re on 12 already.”
Photo: JJ Media
But the Aston is a new car for this year. And the speed is improving all the time, both here and in IMSA. So hopefully it will work fine in the race as well.
“Yeah, definitely. I think a lot of people expect and want to see cars, you know, put on the ground and be immediately fast, and we all want that as well, right? You want to be winning straight away as an athlete, you’re selfish, right? But it’s never quite as easy as that, and especially with this program you know we started testing like in the middle of last year, and the team has come, you know it’s been built from the ground up. But like you correctly say, we have made huge progress in the first three races.”
“I think we’ve been progressed again since, you know. We had a really good test in Monza, which is probably the closest track you can get to Le Mans, and yeah, it’s been an enjoyable process of just finding gains in the car. It’s a really exciting thing for a driver when you’re in a new program, you’re able to influence the direction of the development. Like I say, we’re finding speed all the time. I know how big steps the opposition made from year one to year two, and year two to year three. But we’re coming, and we’re fighting legitimately in the midfield in Spa, which is exciting.”
Yeah, it’s a big pace improvement compared to your first race. But there are so many new systems, I imagine, and it’s still a new car to everyone, to the team as well.
“Yeah, absolutely. We’ve got a different package, we’ve got no hybrid, so there’s less adjustability, but at the same time we have a little bit more natural feeling of driving the car. Like you say, we are still learning our package, and our strengths and weaknesses. We have made some good steps on the electronics side, and I think that will rotate the car a bit better, especially at corners like Mulsanne and Arnage where it’s quite tight, and you need to rotate and go. And we got some other longer term technical updates on the back burner as well, for later down the line.”
Aston Martin THOR Team has entered two cars for the 93rd edition of the 24 Hours of Le Mans, running with Harry Tincknell, Tom Gamble and Ross Gunn in car #007, while Marco Sørensen, Roman De Angelis and Alex Riberas shares car #009. The two cars were 11th, 15th / 18th, 20th in the two practices respectively, but you never know, what their running plan was on the test day.
The first official practice will be tomorrow Wednesday at 14.00 CET with the first Qualifying session, for the Hypercar category, being run at 19.30.
