Aston Martin Valkyrie returns to Road America in bid for championship points

Aston Martin announced Thursday that its innovative hypercar, the Valkyrie, will return to the iconic 4-mile Road America circuit in the United States from Friday through Sunday.

With the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship entering its final stretch — just three races remaining in the GTP class season — the Valkyrie will again compete for championship points.

The Aston Martin THOR team scored points with both Valkyrie entries for the first time at the FIA World Endurance Championship's São Paulo 6 Hours in Brazil earlier this month. At Road America, the team aims to again demonstrate the consistent competitiveness it has shown throughout the season in North America's premier sportscar championship.

The Motul Sportscar Endurance Grand Prix — the eighth round of the 11-race IMSA calendar — takes on a new format this year. The race at Elkhart Lake will be run as a six-hour event for the first time since the modern IMSA era began.

The change revives a tradition dating to the 1950s, when the circuit hosted races on public roads. The event also serves as the penultimate round of the IMSA Michelin Endurance Cup (IMEC), which concludes with the season finale, the Motul Petit Le Mans, at Road Atlanta on Oct. 3.

The IMEC comprises five long-distance races of six hours or more held during the IMSA regular season.

The Valkyrie, run by the official Aston Martin THOR team, has finished in the top 10 in five of the six races held so far this season. Among those results was an eighth-place finish and a sixth-place qualifying position at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca in California. Since its competitive debut at Sebring in 2025, the Valkyrie has recorded 12 top-10 finishes in 15 races.

"There is a lot to be positive about heading into this weekend at Road America," said Ian James, team principal of Aston Martin THOR. "The team is much better organized than when we visited last year, and we have accumulated a lot more experience and knowledge about how to get the best out of the Valkyrie. With the race being six hours this year, we also expect there to be more opportunities to use strategy to our advantage."

Adam Carter, Aston Martin's head of endurance motorsport, said the team's understanding of the Valkyrie and how to extract its full performance continues to deepen with each race. "There is a real determination across the whole team to succeed, and a belief that we can achieve better results than we have so far this season," he said. "So I'm really looking forward to seeing what we can do at Road America this weekend."

The Valkyrie is Aston Martin's first Le Mans Hypercar (LMH) and the only car competing in IMSA's top GTP class derived from a road-legal hypercar. It is also the first LMH to compete in IMSA and the only LMH entered in both IMSA and the FIA World Endurance Championship simultaneously.

The race version, developed by Aston Martin and the THOR team from the road-going Valkyrie, features a race-optimized carbon fiber chassis and an uprated 6.5-liter naturally aspirated V12 engine. In road-car specification, the engine produces more than 1,000 horsepower at a maximum of 11,000 rpm; for racing, output is regulated to 500 kilowatts (680 horsepower) under hypercar regulations.

Meanwhile, Aston Martin showcased its most performance-focused S model lineup in the brand's history at the 2026 Goodwood Festival of Speed, held in the United Kingdom from July 9 to 12.