Aston Martin Valkyrie

The shape is an argument about where downforce should come from. Newey ran two venturi tunnels the length of the underfloor into a very large diffuser, which meant the upper surfaces could stay clean. There is no fixed rear wing on the road car, no canards, none of the bolted-on apparatus that defines its rivals. What is left is a teardrop cabin on a waisted body with the wheels pushed to the corners, and it reads as an aerodynamic solution rather than a styling exercise because that is what it is. Miles Nurnberger handled the exterior under Marek Reichman, and much of that work was making Newey's surfaces look like an Aston Martin. There is no rear window at all; a camera does that job, and camera stalks replace the door mirrors. The grille is a shape rather than an opening. The obsession runs down to the fittings. The enamel wings badge was judged too heavy, so the design team had one chemically etched from aluminium thinner than a human hair. The Spider keeps all of it and adds a removable carbon roof panel, which is a harder trick than it sounds on a body doing structural and aerodynamic work at the same time.

This is the only one of the modern hypercars that actually went racing in the top class, and it took a decade to get there. Aston Martin announced a Valkyrie-based Le Mans Hypercar in 2019, then cancelled it in early 2020 when the Lawrence Stroll consortium took control and pushed the money towards Formula 1. The programme came back in 2025 with The Heart of Racing running it as the Aston Martin THOR Team. The debut season was honest rather than triumphant. Both cars finished Le Mans in 2025, 12th and 14th. Sorensen and Riberas took fifth at Fuji, Riberas led a World Endurance race on merit at Bahrain, and the year closed with seventh there. In IMSA it managed seven top-ten finishes from eight races and then second at Petit Le Mans in October, the Valkyrie's first podium anywhere and the first outright IMSA podium in Aston Martin's history. 2026 has gone better. Ninth at Imola, fourth at Spa, and eighth at Le Mans in June, the best finish there for any car derived from a road-legal hypercar, which made it a fifth consecutive points score. Aston Martin's own framing is worth repeating: it is the only car in the class that started life as a road car.

The Valkyrie had a reputation before it had customers, and the reputation was Newey's. His involvement was the story from 2016 onward, and it acquired a second act in March 2025 when he left Red Bull after nineteen years and started at Aston Martin's Formula 1 team as Managing Technical Partner. The man who designed the road car now works for the company that sells it. Ownership skews the way you would expect. Max Verstappen has one. Fernando Alonso took delivery of his in Monaco in 2024 and Aston Martin put out a press release about it. David Coulthard bought one, was filmed driving it through Monaco with his son, then had it stop and refuse to move under its own power, and sold it through Joe Macari within months. Nobody has established why he sold it and this page will not guess. Gran Turismo 7 added the road car in June 2023, which is where most people have driven one, and Polyphony's connection to the project runs back to the Red Bull X2010 that Newey designed for the series in 2010. The race car appears in Le Mans Ultimate.

The Valkyrie was difficult before anyone took delivery. Cars were promised for 2018, then 2019, then 2020, and when Aston Martin finally announced full production in November 2021 only ten shipped that quarter, held up by electronics. Early owners described strict operating procedures and drive modes that had to be respected. David Coulthard's car stopped in Monaco and could not move under its own power. The cars that followed are better sorted, but nobody should mistake this for a usable machine. Fuel consumption runs between four and nineteen miles per gallon depending entirely on your right foot, so planning a route feels like planning one in an electric car. The turning circle is enormous and three-point turns become seven-point turns. The air conditioning will blow hot into the cabin while it is busy cooling the powertrain. After slow driving the engine has to be left running to recharge the battery or the car may not restart. Small things go wrong in interesting ways. evo's test car briefly lost its mirror cameras, once refused first gear from neutral, and melted the adhesive holding the rear numberplate on. None of that is a reason not to own one. All of it is a reason to know what you are taking on.