Aston Martin Racing, together with official works team partners Heart of Racing, is set to enter two Valkyrie AMR-LMH hypercars at the 2025 edition of the 24 Hours of Le Mans race in France, as well as the rest of the World Endurance Championship season.

This is in compliance with the Automobile Club de l’Ouest’s request that each official factory works team be required to enter two cars. ACO is the organizer for the 24 Hours of Le Mans.

The Valkyrie was originally slated to enter the new Le Mans Hypercar (LMH)/Le Mans Daytona Hybrid (LMDh) class, which was announced in late 2018 following that year’s Le Mans race.

Aston Martin, along with Toyota, was the first to confirm participation with the new regulations in 2019, but the British sports-car marque pulled the plug on the program in early 2020 due to financial difficulties facing the company.

Now, it seems its fortunes have improved, and Aston Martin is back. The racing version is well-advanced in its testing stage, undergoing evaluation at Silverstone in the UK and the Portimao Circuit in Algarve, Portugal.

The Valkyrie was originally co-designed by Red Bull Racing’s Adrian Newey and codeveloped with Multimatic. The powerplant is a Cosworth V12 revving to 11,000rpm and making 1,160hp.

The racing versions will see substantial changes to the aerodynamics, the chassis, the suspension, and the powertrain to equalize their performance with other hypercars on the track.

Heart of Racing originally raced Aston Martin’s GT cars. Now, aside from representing Aston Martin in the WEC, the American-based racing team is also committed to run a Valkyrie in the American IMSA series, which uses the same set of regulations for the World Endurance Championship. It has recently built a UK hub for its WEC campaign and to be closer to Aston Martin.

Aston Martin will finally join the ranks of BMW, Cadillac, Ferrari, Isotta Fraschini, Lamborghini, Peugeot, Porsche, and Toyota making for a historic nine manufacturers in the hypercar class next year.

And with LMH/LMDh technical regulations set to be maintained until at least 2029, this means we will be in for lots of intense hypercar racing in the near future.

With a 95-year history at Le Mans, 2025 will be the first time since 1959 that Aston Martin will compete for outright victory at the famed Circuit de la Sarthe.