Aston Martin’s Valkyrie hypercar has completed a comprehensive test at Silverstone’s Grand Prix circuit, which will host the British round of the 2027 FIA World Endurance Championship (WEC) in April.
The Aston Martin Thor Team tested a development version of the 6.5-liter V12-powered Valkyrie Hypercar at Silverstone, with factory drivers Ross Gunn and Harry Tincknell completing the session. The team oversees Aston Martin’s WEC Hypercar and IMSA GTP programs.
Aston Martin Thor evaluated a range of technical developments during the Silverstone test, collecting data to inform the future performance development of the Valkyrie Hypercar.
“This was a significant day for Valkyrie,” said Aston Martin Thor team principal Ian James. “Some of the developments we tried today will fuel our thinking as we consider the technical direction we go next with Valkyrie. We have been able to evaluate lots of areas of performance on the car, so Silverstone has proved an interesting place to challenge ideas. There’s more to come, and I think it gives us reasons to be excited about what might be next for Valkyrie.”
The Valkyrie has shown performance improvements across its 2026 WEC and IMSA campaigns. In WEC, it secured its first double-points finish at the 6 Hours of São Paulo; in IMSA, the car has recorded six top-10 finishes from seven starts, including a second-place finish on the road at its latest event.
“We’ve been happy with Valkyrie’s performance characteristics in the first two seasons of competition,” said Aston Martin’s head of endurance motorsport, Adam Carter. “We’ve repeatedly said that we’ve entered an arena with a high level of formidable adversaries that are also several years further down the development track than us.
“So, we are now beginning to explore new areas of performance that we may gain through developing the base car, now that we understand its characteristics that much better after 18 months of racing it. We’re right at the beginning of that journey, and this was a useful and informative start to that development process.”
The test also gave Aston Martin Thor experience of the Michelin tires and Silverstone circuit characteristics ahead of the WEC’s return to the venue in 2027. The event will be the championship’s first British round since 2019.
“We very much welcome Silverstone back to the calendar,” said Carter. “It is not only the home of Aston Martin and British motorsport but also the perfect opportunity for some of the best fans in the world to experience the raw and visceral joy that is the Aston Martin Valkyrie hypercar. They have waited a long time to see Valkyrie competing at the highest level on British soil, and they deserve to be thoroughly entertained. We will do our best to contribute to that experience.”
Developed from the Valkyrie production car by Aston Martin and Thor, the current competition version blends a race-optimized carbon-fiber chassis with a modified 6.5-liter V12 powerplant that revs to 11,000rpm and produces over 1,000bhp in standard form, but adheres to a strict 500kW (680bhp) power limit as per hypercar regulations.
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