Heart of Racing move onto their home round of the FIA WEC from CoTA this weekend

The Aston Martin Heart of Racing team begins the second half of the 2026 FIA World Endurance Championship season with a sense of true momentum, as it returns to the Circuit of the Americas in Austin for the six-hour Lone Star Le Mans race this weekend.

The British hypercar, prepared and operated by the works Aston Martin THOR Team, is midway through its second WEC season in 2026. Having achieved its first double-points finish at the previous race in Brazil, it arrives at the fifth round of the championship in a state of growing competitiveness. The fact that the team has claimed points in every race in 2026 – and maintains a streak of six consecutive points finishes since the 6 Hours of Fuji last year – means Aston Martin THOR is locked in a fierce battle for fifth place in the FIA Hypercar World Endurance Manufacturers’ Championship with Alpine, with four races left to contest.

Tom Gamble and Harry Tincknell are riding high on a consistent run of four consecutive points finishes stretching back to the season-opening race at Imola. The British duo – Tincknell, a double 24 Hours of Le Mans class winner, and former European Le Mans Series Champion Gamble – also claimed Valkyrie’s best result in WEC, with fourth place at Spa-Francorchamps in May, as well as Aston Martin’s best Hypercar finish in the 24 Hours of Le Mans where they finished eighth.

Meanwhile their team-mates, multiple WEC and IMSA GT class race-winner Alex Riberas, and triple WEC GT champion Marco Sørensen, who achieved points finishes (Drivers’ or Manufacturers’) on three occasions in 2025, claimed their first points of 2026 in the 6 Hours of São Paulo – finishing sixth.

Now both crews head to COTA, whose high-speed sections should play to the strengths of Valkyrie, which shone on its Texas debut in 2025. Indeed, last year’s race provided the first clear marker for Valkyrie’s true potential in WEC as the car raced comfortably in the top five at various points in the race. Aston Martin THOR, with 12 months’ additional data, now aims to convert that potential into another significant haul of points.

Aston Martin Racing’s most successful racing car, the Vantage, also returns to the Circuit of the Americas for this fifth round of the FIA Championship. The 3.4-mile circuit has proved a consistently happy hunting ground for the LMGT3 platform which has claimed no less than 10 class victories from 13 podium appearances – including four double-class wins.

One of those victories was with the Heart of Racing Team, which returns to its home race determined to repeat that success. The win, in 2024, marked the first WEC success for team and team principal Ian James, who also claimed his first world championship pole position on the same weekend.

James will be joined in the #27 THOR Vantage GT3 by regular co-drivers Mattia Drudi , the double 24 Hours of Le Mans pole-winner, and former IMSA GTD champion Zach Robichon. The trio have been competitive in the class everywhere they have visited in 2026, and yet only have a second place at Spa-Francorchamps in May to show for their efforts – thanks to an uncharacteristic spell of misfortune.

As usual, THOR brings two ultra-competitive Aston Martin Racing Vantage LMGT3’s to the fight, with the sister #23 car driven by its regular lineup of Gray Newell, Dudu Barrichello and Jonny Adam who finished third at La Sarthe. For Newell, COTA marks a first opportunity to compete on home turf at world championship level – and one of the few venues on the schedule where he has prior racing experience. Adam, meanwhile, returns to COTA for the first time since 2020, when he was a GTE-Am class winner.

Source material – Aston Martin