Aston Martin Valkyrie to race at Le Mans in 2023? You heard it here first

After last year’s dress rehearsal, the 2022 edition of Le Mans was hoped to mark the true start of the hypercar era. But with Peugeot still unconfirmed and looking increasingly likely to defer their entry into the World Endurance Championship until later in the season, all eyes are now on 2023. And with reason. In one of other of the top two categories will come factory teams from, wait for it, Ferrari, Porsche, Audi, Peugeot, BMW, Cadillac, Honda, Toyota, Alpine, Glickenhaus and… wait once more and with fingers only slightly crossed, Aston Martin.

Yes, the big surprise from Thursday’s launch of Aston Martin’s new AMR22 Formula 1 car came not from the build hall where the car was introduced to the press, friends, family and people who work for the team, but upstairs in an office where I asked executive chairman Lawrence Stroll if he had plans to take Aston Martin sports car racing again. His reply was bigger and better than I could have possibly hoped, and had it not also been deemed off the record would have represented something of a scoop for me.

But let us say for now and as a result of that conversation, I know that Aston Martin is looking very seriously at a return to the place where it has enjoyed more success than any other, including that solitary outright win back in 1959. And were I a betting man, I’d bet plenty on it being there with everyone else on next year’s grid and with the Valkyrie hypercar that, let’s not forget, was always designed with racing at Le Mans in mind until the previous administration lost either the interest or the means to pursue it.

So book your campsite early, because it seems that what was already looking like the most competitive Le Mans in history (can anyone else remember a time when ten factory teams fought for outright victory?) is now likely to have a British dimension added, and we have observed before, the Brits like Le Mans like no other country, possibly including France.

Who will drive? I’d say Nico Hülkenberg, probably the best ‘spare’ driver any team could wish for, was a certainty given his ‘played one, won one’ record in the race. And what about Sebastian Vettel? He’s expressed interest in the race in the past and described what Hulkenberg did as ‘an incredible achievement’ not least, one presumes, because he did it while also a full time F1 driver. So for Sebastian participating in one discipline may not preclude taking part in the other. Two Astons, driver teams led by Nico and Seb. Now that would be something.

But that is not the extent of Stroll’s ambitions. Possibly not before time he is also planning Aston’s first one make race series. This is a lucrative business to be in, which is why most of its rivals, including Porsche, Lamborghini, Ferrari and McLaren have had their series, or multiples thereof, for a while now. The Aston series won’t happen for a while though, because Stroll wants it based on Aston’s now unnamed standard production mid-engined street car which probably won’t go on sale until 2024.

If you need a refresh, Aston Martin’s former management led by Andy Palmer regarded it as essential that the company became a player in the mid-engined field because that’s where all the money in the super luxury sports car market lies: just ask Ferrari, Lamborghini or McLaren. And sound business sense that makes. But it had no track record and feared not being taken seriously, so steps were taken to establish its credentials: hence the deal for Red Bull to carry the Aston wings, hence the Valkyrie, hence its scarcely less mad Valhalla successor, all building toward the car that actually matters.