Aston Martin ‘outperformed its expectations’ in first season with Valkyrie hypercar

Aston Martin “overachieved” and beat its own expectations in its maiden season in the World Endurance Championship’s Hypercar class, believes factory driver Tom Gamble.

The British manufacturer debuted the Valkyrie LMH in 2025, running parallel programmes in the WEC and the IMSA SportsCar Championship with The Heart of Racing team.

After a tough first outing in the WEC season opener in Qatar, Aston gradually improved its V12-powered contender, finishing on the podium in IMSA’s Petit Le Mans finale and fifth in the WEC’s penultimate round at Fuji.

The #009 Valkyrie shared by Marco Sorensen, Alex Riberas and Roman de Angelis also led the Bahrain 8 Hours at the halfway point of the race, but a lack of fresh tyres in the final stages left the crew seventh at the finish. 

Although the Valkyrie project endured a challenging build-up, including the decision to forgo January’s Daytona 24 Hours to focus on development, Gamble said he has been impressed by what the team managed to achieve in its first campaign.

“In terms of the car’s pace, with the level in this championship, we’ve kind of almost overachieved our expectations,” the Briton told Motorsport.com.

“We knew it was going to be difficult coming in. I think where we’ve come from Qatar [with] one car not finishing and [the other] being laps and laps behind… 

“We got the reliability sorted, which was a big tick, and then we started to push on a bit more in performance.  

“If somebody had said you’d be topping three practice sessions, obviously one at Fuji, and then one here [in Bahrain], we would have taken that. 

“We’re definitely moving forward a lot. Every weekend we go into, we’ve got a little bit more tools to work with, and more performance coming from the car, which is just kind of giving us more confidence in the package we’ve got.”

No ‘ups and downs’

Gamble’s team-mate Harry Tincknell was heavily involved in the development of the Valkyrie LMH as part of his role at Multimatic, the company that Aston Martin partnered with to co-develop the car.

Tincknell, a two-time Le Mans 24 Hours class winner, was surprised by how linear the team’s upward trajectory had been across the season.

«Every single race this year, we’ve just got better and better and better,” the 34-year-old told Motorsport.com. “We’ve come from basically a standing start to getting a podium at Petit Le Mans. And at Fuji, there was a chance of a podium as well. 

“That’s very unusual, to just get better and better and better every single race. Usually, you sort of improve a bit and then you have a bad race and [then] you improve a bit, and you’re hoping that the average trend’s higher across the year; whereas we’ve just been getting better every time.

“But that’s because we’ve got a great team behind us. Every weekend they’re bringing updates and putting it on the car, and they’re working, which is really exciting.”

How Aston Martin has been making constant progress

While homologation rules prevent teams from making any major changes during the season, Tincknell believes Aston Martin was able to make major headways in smaller areas to improve both the performance and the reliability of the Valkyrie.

“We have unlocked a lot of learning in the mechanical set-up of the car. We’d done so little testing before we started, so we were sort of learning on the job,” he explained.

“We understand the characteristics of the car a lot more, and we’ve brought a lot of updates on the software side of things as well. Things like differential braking systems that really help in [improving] the drivability of the car and allowing us to push harder.

“Obviously, you can’t develop the aero or change any sort of suspension items or anything like that during the year. So most of the improvement has come from understanding the car better and then software updates.”

#31 Cadillac Action Express Cadillac V- Series.R: Jack Aitken, Earl Bamber, Frederik Vesti, #23 Aston Martin Thor Team Aston Martin Valkyrie: Ross Gunn, Roman De Angelis, Alex Riberas, #6 Porsche Penske Motorsport Porsche 963: Mathieu Jaminet, Matt Campbell, Julien Andlauer

Photo by: Michael L. Levitt / Lumen via Getty Images

Aston Martin can target victories in 2026 — Tincknell

Given Aston Martin’s strong end to the year in both the WEC and IMSA, Tincknell is confident that the British manufacturer can become an even more potent challenger in 2026, with victories firmly within its reach.

“If we can continue to improve over the winter and continue this progress during the season, then there’s no reason why we can’t be fighting right at the front, like we’re starting to do now,” he said.

“We feel like we belong in the championship now.

“We have a car that is a fan favourite. Everyone loves the noise. But we’ve now got a car that we can be proud of the performance as well.

“But we’ve got to keep working hard. Everyone else will be as well. I think we can have a really good shot at winning races next season.”

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— The Motorsport.com Team