Car recorded best-ever WEC result of fourth at COTA

Valkyrie earned first WEC points at Fuji last year

No. 007 seeks sixth straight points finish

Vantage also enters LMGT3 on back of strong form

Drivers from Aston Martin's The Heart of Racing team hold up trophies at the LMGT3 class podium ceremony for the Lone Star Le Mans race at Circuit of the Americas in Texas. The Aston Martin Vantage finished first and third in the event. [Aston Martin]
Drivers from Aston Martin's The Heart of Racing team hold up trophies at the LMGT3 class podium ceremony for the Lone Star Le Mans race at Circuit of the Americas in Texas. The Aston Martin Vantage finished first and third in the event. [Aston Martin]

Aston Martin's hypercar, the Valkyrie, is heading back to Fuji Speedway in Japan — the circuit where it scored its first-ever FIA World Endurance Championship points — with its sights set on a maiden podium and a ninth consecutive points finish.

Aston Martin announced Wednesday that it will enter two Valkyries in the six-hour race at Fuji Speedway on Sunday, the sixth round of the 2026 FIA WEC season.

Fuji holds special significance for the Valkyrie. Last year, Marco Sørensen and Alex Riberas spent most of the race fighting at the front before securing the car's first WEC points at the circuit.

The team's competitiveness has grown consistently since then. Aston Martin's The Heart of Racing (THOR) squad has placed at least one Valkyrie in the points in each of the eight WEC rounds held after last year's Fuji race.

Most notably, three weeks ago at the Lone Star Le Mans at Circuit of the Americas in Texas, Harry Tincknell and Tom Gamble drove the No. 007 Valkyrie to a fourth-place finish — the best result the car has ever recorded in WEC competition. The gap to the podium was less than three seconds.

The car also narrowly missed pole position in qualifying, underlining its pace at the front of the field. Aston Martin is currently battling Alpine for fifth place in the manufacturers' championship.

Tincknell and Gamble have scored points in all five rounds held so far this season in the No. 007 Valkyrie. A points finish at Fuji would extend that run to six consecutive races.

"The last race was one of our best weekends with the No. 007 Valkyrie — we qualified and finished fourth, and showed we had the pace to run at the front from practice all the way through to the finish," Tincknell said. "This race will be a great opportunity to secure more points."

Riberas and Sørensen will pilot the No. 009 Valkyrie. The pair scored their first points of the season at the Six Hours of São Paulo in July and will be aiming to better the fifth-place result they achieved at Fuji last year.

The Valkyrie race car was developed from Aston Martin's road-going hypercar. It uses a carbon fiber chassis and a 6.5-liter V12 engine that produces more than 1,000 horsepower at 11,000 rpm in standard trim, though WEC Hypercar and IMSA GTP regulations cap its output at 500 kilowatts (approximately 680 horsepower) in competition.

THOR team principal Ian James said last year's Fuji race was an important turning point for the team. "Our goal this weekend is to show the same level of competitiveness we had then," he said.

The Aston Martin Vantage GT3 will also compete in the LMGT3 class at the same event. At the previous round at COTA, the Vantage swept the top two qualifying positions and went on to finish first and third in the race. Having claimed pole position in three consecutive races, the team will also be chasing a fourth straight LMGT3 pole at Fuji — which would be a first in the class.

Ian James, Mattia Drudi and Jack Robichon will share the No. 27 Vantage, while Gray Newell, Jonny Adam and Dudu Barrichello will drive the No. 23.

The Vantage has now won in every GT class contested in WEC — LMGTE Pro, LMGTE Am and LMGT3 — and every one of the car's five generations has a WEC victory to its name.

The Fuji six-hour race starts at 11 a.m. on Sunday.


kwater@heraldcorp.com