All set for the four Aston Martin crews ahead of tomorrows 6 hours of Imola
Saturday, April 19, 2025
Round two of the 2025 FIA World Endurance Championship in Italy this weekend after the season opener and global racing debut of the all-new Valkyrie Hypercar from Qatar back in late February sees the #007 and #009 Aston Martins again compete within their class of eighteen cars whilst the #10 and #27 Vantage LMGT3’s compete within a similar sized grid although what they have both arrived with is somewhat more familiar than the V12 beasts across the garage.
Before Qatar, it had just been a load of development testing for the two crews but running parallel programmes with the car within the IMSA Weathertech Sportscar Championship as they do, the acquisition of race data from both sides has allowed the car to develop and improve already.
Free Practice 1 got underway earlier this week with the first wet session of the season which saw the #009 take long strides up the timing screen by the end of the session with the #007 more in contact with their peers than before. Within LMGT3, both cars figured around the midfield of the class, less than a second behind the fastest as all drivers got their eye in around the 4.9km circuit.
Free Practice 1 got underway earlier this week with the first wet session of the season which saw the #009 take long strides up the timing screen by the end of the session with the #007 more in contact with their peers than before. Within LMGT3, both cars figured around the midfield of the class, less than a second behind the fastest as all drivers got their eye in around the 4.9km circuit.
FP2 was much the same although the #007 lost all of the lap times set by Harry Tincknell when he was aboard for speeding within the pit lane whilst both the #10 and #27 crews closed the gaps to the pace setting Lexus cars to just over half a second.
Going into this morning’s final Free Practice session, both Valkyrie crews lifted their cars off the bottom of the timing screens both on pace as well as via the misfortunes of others to go into Qualifying in a positive vein.
The GT’s again went out first for Qualifying with Ian James again leading the AMR powered charge within his #27 car with Derek DeBoer still experiencing his first taste of the Italian circuit within his #10 car. Whilst a best lap time of 1:43:994 was good enough to take him through to LMGT3 Hyperpole, DeBoer’s best of 1:44:591 was not so the car that he shares with Eduardo Barrichello and Valentin Hasse-Clot was locked to P15 for tomorrows race.
It was then a great job from a standing start from Zacharie Robichon who took over the #27 HoRT in Hyperpole nd saw him grab a second row start in P3 for his efforts.
Next out were the Hypercar class with both Tincknell (with Tom Gamble) and Marco Sorensen (with Alex Riberas) driving the #007 and #009 cars respectively where the Dane lost perhaps his best lap time due to track limits on lap 4 to again finish behind their sister car in the timing ranks. Again, not making it through to Hyperpole, the two Valkyries both improved upon their Qualifying pace of last time to start tomorrows race 16thand 17th in class.
The Six hours of Imola gets waved off at 13:00hrs local tomorrow.
Photo credits – Teams / Series / social media
