Next stop the 12 Hours of Sebring after todays qualifying for the three Aston Martin entries
Friday, March 14, 2025
With that and the preceding Free Practice sessions came the eventual American debut of the much-anticipated Aston Martin Valkyrie GTP car from the Heart of Racing team along their other Aston Martin Racing Vantage GTD entry and that another from the Van Der Steur Racing team.
Being another endurance round on the back of the Rolex 24 opener from Daytona at the end of January sees additional drivers taking part with each of the Heart of Racing entries whilst the Van Der Steur team are only due to compete within the endurance rounds, so their driver line up has remained the same.
The #23 Valkyrie did not participate within the Rolex 24 opener as the team sought additional time before homologating their new creation with its global racing debut then coming at the opening round of the World Endurance Championship. This weekend’s drivers (Ross Gunn, Roman De Angelis and Alex Riberas) were all driving the new Valkyrie within the WEC opener and do so again within the IMSA Championship before both Gunn and De Angelis due to take the GTP entry on during the shorter races within the 2025 season.
Within the GDT class, the #27 Heart of Racing again has two drivers from their WEC LMGT3 commitments as Tom Gamble (Valkyrie) and Zacharie Robichon (LMGT3) partner up again with Casper Stevenson after their P3 podium finish together at Daytona. The #19 Van Der Steur GTD entry meanwhile again features the driving skills of the team’s namesake in Rory Van Der Steur, Valentin Hasse-Clot and Anthony McIntosh in a car that is sometimes overshadowed by the adventures of the HoRT team and their Valkyrie entry.
Three practice sessions and Qualifying done across the fifty-six-car total entry for this weekend’s event finally saw the #23 Valkyrie secure a P12 in class start ahead of tomorrow’s race whilst the #27 HoRT Vantage crew secured P6 in their class. The #19 Van Der Steur crew qualified P16 but that was after their fastest time was deleted by Race Control for causing a red flag within one of the earlier Free Practice sessions.
Whilst both AMR Vantage GTD crews will always be competitive within class to some degree, the Valkyrie GTP (and WEC Hypercar) creation is still work in progress as the car is still two seconds off the pace – something similar to what was seen at the Qatar WEC opener but there, the car performed better than expected.
The Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring kicks off at 10:10hrs local on Saturday.
Photo credits – Teams / Series / social media
