Aston Martin lost a podium in a dramatic climax to the 2026 World Endurance Championship in Monza due to two penalties that dropped the #007 Valkyrie down to 12th place.
Having struggled with early strategy calls that failed to pay off, Aston Martin’s factory team Heart of Racing elected to roll the dice in the closing stages of the six-hour race.
With the Hypercar field forced into heavy fuel and energy conservation, Tom Gamble ignored fuel-saving measures in the hope of a late Full Course Yellow or Safety Car to reduce both fuel consumption and race distance. Gamble climbed from ninth to third in the final stint before starting to conserve energy.
The long-awaited intervention never materialised despite a heavy late-race accident involving Alex Lynn’s Cadillac, leaving Gamble to push flat-out while burning through his permitted energy allocation. The lack of a Full-Course Yellow or Virtual Safety Car was questioned by several drivers after the race, including Gamble himself. An intervention would have likely saved the Aston’s third place.
Even without the intervention, Aston Martin’s high-stakes game was close to paying off but fell short by about three seconds. Due to the accident and the resulting debris, lap times were significantly slower on the final two laps, but not enough to prevent a 191st lap from being triggered.
The winning time for the #38 Cadillac was 6h1m33.199s, with the leaders lapping at around 1m36s on worn tyres.
“I was told the race leader crossed the finish line with like three seconds on the clock, so it was pretty tight. Of course, not their fault. Our decision meant we were not going to make it unless the race would have been one lap shorter,” Gamble told the media including Motorsport.com.
#007 Aston Martin Thor Team Aston Martin Valkyrie: Harry Tincknell, Tom Gamble
Photo by: Jakob Ebrey
The #007 crew was hit with a 145-second time penalty (comprising a 100-second penalty plus a drive-through equivalent) including getting stripped of one lap for exceeding the maximum usable energy per stint. With the Virtual Fuel Tank rule, cars no longer run out of fuel like in old times but overuse their virtual energy allowance.
Even if he had made it to the flag on fuel, however, Gamble and team-mate Harry Tincknell would still have been stripped of their podium finish due to a separate 20-second penalty for low tyre pressures.
“Obviously, we were doing a high amount of energy saving to try and do everything we can and then in doing so, obviously, the pressure has come down,” Gamble explained.
Earlier strategy gambles also backfired
Reflecting on a high-risk strategy that ultimately unravelled, Gamble admitted that the team had little to lose coming from so far back on the grid. Several attempts to go “off sequence” in the first half of the race backfired due to safety car interventions.
“We’ve obviously been close to the podium a few times and it’s important for us to get on it, really, on the podium and we were starting so far back as well,” he said, having started 14th among 17 Hypercar entrants.
“It was kind of a, ‘why not take a bit of a gamble?’ So we took a few risks, especially at the start and none of them paid off at all. Kind of everything we didn’t want to happen, happened, which was incredibly frustrating.”
#009 Aston Martin Thor Team Aston Martin Valkyrie: Alex Riberas, Marco Sorensen
Photo by: Jakob Ebrey
Despite the disappointing end to the weekend and a race featuring multiple early strategy setbacks, including dropping a lap down before recovering under a Virtual Safety Car, Gamble preferred to look at the bigger picture of Aston Martin’s debut Hypercar campaign.
“I think the team should be really proud of themselves for the job they’ve done this year,” Gamble concluded. “Obviously, it’s at a high level here and they’re getting closer and closer to the level each time.”
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