Up until Qualifying for Sundays race, the IMSA based performance of the #23 Heart of Racing Aston Martin Valkyrie of Ross Gunn and Roman De Angelis had been upon the right side of an impressive learning curve for the new for 2025 chassis whilst the team’s #27 Aston Martin Racing Vantage GTD of Casper Stevenson, Tom Gamble and Zacharie Robichon was again another crew to watch.
These two crews, plus the #19 Van Der Stuer Aston Martin Racing Vantage GTD of Anthony McIntosh, Valentin Hasse-Clot and a deputising Eduardo Barrichello for an injured Rory Van Der Steur set out their stools early in Free Practice and Qualifying where the #23 would eventually finish out P11 upon Sunday’s grid, the #27 securing a dominant and inaugural pole position for Stevenson and McIntosh not too much further back in P9.
However, the six-hour race had other ideas as the #19 suffered its first skirmish of other cars upon the opening lap to lose a door mirror before quickly suffering from what became terminal gearbox and transmission issues that would see that car and crew retire from the race just before half distance.
The pole setting #27 would also come under closer scrutiny that what they would have preferred that would also knock them back from being front runners in class to just being able to finish whilst the #23 Valkyrie crew looked destined for another performance topping performance of their own before a lap stop also consigned them to a P11 in class finishing position like their GTD stablemates.
Whilst that is all very disappointing for all concerned, there is no time to dwell upon what might have been as the demands of modern race calendars sees many of those involved with IMSA at IMS move quickly on for this weekend’s penultimate round of the FIA World Endurance Championship from Fuji in Japan.
Whilst the Valkyrie participation increases again to two Heart of Racing entries with their #007 and #009 cars, they will in turn be joined by their #27 Aston Martin Racing Vantage LMGT3 as well as the #10 Racing Spirit of Leman AMR Vantage LMGT3 for this Sunday’s six-hour affair.
Tom Gamble moves back to the #007 Valkyrie alongside Harry Tincknell whilst Marco Sorensen and Alex Riberas pair up again within their #009 car. Both crews will be hoping for some reward this time around after their hard graft efforts in the wet of the Circuit of The Americas last time out ended in technical failure for both cars.
The #27 Heart of Racing AMR Vantage LMGT3 will again be populated again by the likes of Ian James, Mattia Drudi and Zacharie Robichon, as will the #10 Racing Spirit of Leman entry that will have the same driver crew that competed at Indianapolis. McIntosh again takes the place of Derek DeBoer who bowed out of the championship at the end of his double stint at CoTA where that car eventually finished P11 in class and the #27 car P5.
Championship wise – the two Valkyrie crews are not in contention for anything (as that was never the intention in year one of this Hypercar project but #27 crew presently stand in fifth, with a points tally of nearly half that of the existing class leaders but there will be additional points available to them at the season finale in Bahrain so they do still have a mathematical chance. Barrichello and Hasse-Clot stand twenty points further back in thirteenth with their P3 finish in Brazil the highlight of their season so far.
Balance of Performance wise – there are again widespread changes within the Hypercar class with the Valkyrie benefitting again from a slight increase in available energy to it whilst in LMGT3, similar widespread changes again affect all OEM’s including the Vantage platform that sees a slight reduction in power but less weight and more available energy!
Cars will hit the track for the first time on Friday.
Photo credits – Teams / Championship / social media