Aston Martin – Syndication Server

Heart of Racing adds GTD PRO entry for Daytona

The Heart of Racing team has added a GTD PRO entry for next month’s Rolex 24 At Daytona. Already committed to entering GTD for the full season alongside its Aston Martin Valkyrie AMR GTP entry, the delayed debut of the Valkyrie until Sebring opened …

Driving the No. 007 Heart of Racing Team Aston Martin Vantage GT3 Evo in GTD PRO will be team regulars Ross Gunn, Roman De Angelis, Alex Riberas – already confirmed as one of the Valkyrie Hypercar drivers for WEC – and Marco Sorensen. Most recently Gunn, De Angelis and Riberas finished the 2024 season with a third-place finish at Motul Petit Le Mans in their debut race together. Sorensen will make his third consecutive Daytona start with Heart of Racing, the Dane having been a part of the 2023 Rolex 24-winning No. 27 team.

“I love kick-starting the year off at Daytona,” said Gunn. “It’s one of the classics that is important to drivers, teams, and manufacturers competing in sports car racing. Our target is to try for the victory –we have a really great team and great car. I’m really happy to be teaming up with Alex and Roman, who did an excellent job at Petit Le Mans. Then adding Marco is just a cherry on top. I’m really looking forward to starting the season, it’s going to be a big challenge with lots of great teams and drivers out there, but we are pretty confident and will give it our best shot.”

Although the team has not declared its full-season drivers for the No. 27 GTD entry, if it keeps the same drivers for the season, the team will welcome back Zacharie Robichon and Tom Gamble, with team newcomers Mattia Drudi and Casper Stevenson set to build on their extensive experience in GT3 machinery with their IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship debut. Robichon rejoins after competing in the team’s No. 27 Aston Martin Vantage in 2024. Gamble will make his first start with the team since Petit Le Mans in 2022, where he was teamed up with Gunn and Riberas, earning a fourth-place finish.

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“This race has been on my bucket list for a long time, and I’m excited to finally check it off,” said Drudi. “Having my dad [Luca Drudi] as a past winner makes this opportunity even more special. The team has delivered strong performances over the past few years and our Aston Martin Vantage GT3 has proven to be increasingly competitive. I can’t wait to get behind the wheel and experience the iconic Daytona circuit!”

Absent from the driver line-up is team principal Ian James, who is not in the seat for the Rolex 24 for the first time in several years.

“We have two really strong line-ups this year for Daytona,” said James. “Though it is a little bittersweet for me, it will be the first Rolex 24 I will not be driving in since we started the team in 2020. I think these young guys will do a great job and hopefully we can come out after 24 hours with a podium finish.”

The teams make their on-track debut for the Roar Before the 24 test weekend on Jan. 17-19, preceding the Rolex 24 on Jan. 23-26.

Fallows departure not linked to Newey arrival, Aston Martin says

Dan Fallows leaving his position as the Aston Martin Formula 1 team’s technical director is down to the team’s performance and not Adrian Newey’s arrival, according to performance director Tom McCullough. Aston Martin announced Fallows will step …

Aston Martin announced Fallows will step down last week, with a statement saying he would be remaining with the wider group. The former Red Bull head of aerodynamics has been with the team since 2022, but McCullough says the fact that Newey will make the same switch next year is not the catalyst for Fallows’ departure.

“No, I think ultimately this decision has been made by the team prior to that,” McCullough said. “The performance of the team this year hasn’t been at the level that we’ve all been wanting it to be at. So we haven’t quite delivered there, and that’s basically been the decision made by the team.

“I sat next to Dan for the last two or three years, since he’s been here, working closely with him. He had a really big impact on the development of the ’22 car, the ’23 car — he has brought a lot to the team. So from that side, it’s been good fun working with him, but ultimately, during ’24 we haven’t delivered on track to the level that we were expecting to and wanted to. The development of these cars has been hard; ultimately it’s a performance-based industry, and the team’s made the decision to make some changes.”

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McCullough believes Aston Martin has the existing personnel and structure to pick up Fallows’ responsibilities without having to hire an external replacement.

“[Executive director] Bob Bell joined early in the year. Overall, Bob’s been overseeing technical functions — I report to Bob, as Dan did, as Luca [Furbatto, engineering director] does. We have strength in depth within the team, so those roles are being shared. We have Eric [Blandin,] on the aero side, taking on quite a lot of the roles at this stage. But ultimately, Bob’s the one responsible.”

Fallows leaves Aston Martin technical director role

Dan Fallows will leave his role as Aston Martin technical director later this month, towards the end of a disappointing season for the Formula 1 team. The former Red Bull head of aerodynamics only joined Aston Martin as technical director in 2022, …

Dan Fallows will leave his role as Aston Martin technical director later this month, towards the end of a disappointing season for the Formula 1 team.

The former Red Bull head of aerodynamics only joined Aston Martin as technical director in 2022, and had a hand in the team’s impressive 2023 results where Fernando Alonso score eight podiums on the way to fourth in the drivers’ championship. The team finished fifth in the constructors’ standings with 280, and while it is in the same position this year it has scored just 86 points to date.

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Aston Martin says Fallows “will no longer serve as technical director of the F1 team”, but will remain with the group. Fallows previously worked under Adrian Newey at Red Bull, with the design legend set to join Aston Martin in early 2025 as managing technical partner.

“In my time at Aston Martin, it has been a joy and a privilege to guide the technical team on their journey towards being race and championship winners,” Fallows said. “ It is time for me to pass on the baton, but I look forward to watching the team’s future success, which I am sure will come soon.”

Aston Martin Group CEO Andy Cowell added a short message of thanks to Fallows, whose next role has yet to be disclosed.

“I would like to thank Dan for his contribution to Aston Martin Aramco in the last two years,” Cowell said. “Dan led the team to the success of the AMR23 which secured eight podiums last season.”

Aston Martin Hypercar to join IMSA test at Daytona

IMSA’s official test at Daytona International Speedway later this month is set to be a significant one for multiple reasons. Along with being the first appearance for GTD cars with torque sensors ahead of the 2025 WeatherTech Championship, it will mark the first run at an IMSA-sanctioned event for Aston Martin’s Valkyrie AMR-LMH ahead of its debut in IMSA GTP and FIA WEC Hypercar next year.

Adam Carter, Aston Martin’s head of endurance motorsport, gave RACER an update on the V12-powered car’s development today at the Bahrain FIA WEC round, confirming that the British manufacturer and partner team Heart of Racing will be in attendance in Florida with a single car. It will represent another important milestone for the revived Valkyrie project.

“We’re progressing well — the car has run well, the feedback around it is positive, but racing is about competition. We know it will be a challenge, which is why we’re coming,” he said when asked about the steps taken in recent months during testing. “We’ve got some formidable competition, so you can’t underestimate the quality and caliber of people here. We’ve taken that into account and set ambitious and appropriate targets.”

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Aston Martin has completed about 6,800 miles of running with the Valkyrie AMR-LMH at multiple circuits. Aston and Heart of Racing will also participate in a Michelin tire test next week in Bahrain with a single car, before heading to the Daytona test with a second chassis.

“In Daytona, you’ll start to see a direction of travel as the teams are building, with support from the UK and U.S. team to make sure we are putting our best foot forward rather than splitting into two teams,” Carter saidwhen asked if the IMSA test will give an indication of which key engineering staff members and drivers will make up the IMSA team.

With the car close to being homologated ahead of the 2025 IMSA and FIA WEC seasons, Carter noted that the process of finalizing the car’s spec is on track.

“It’s fine,” he said, “we’ve had mega support from the FIA, ACO and IMSA and everyone is working together.”

However, no firm decision has been made on where the car will make its global race debut. Will it be at the Rolex 24 At Daytona in January, or the FIA WEC season opener in Qatar a month later?

“We have our plan, we are going with our plan, and we have regular review meetings,” he said. “We will make the appropriate decisions at the appropriate time.”

Heart of Racing to run single-car GTP and GTD entries in 2025

As it expands into the Grand Touring Prototype category in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship with the new Aston Martin Valkyrie Hypercar, the Heart of Racing team will pare its GT efforts to a single GTD entry. For the 2025 season, Heart …

For the 2025 season, Heart of Racing will campaign the No. 23 Aston Martin Valkyrie in the GTP class as well as the No. 27 Aston Martin Vantage in GTD. The team is extending its partnership with Aston Martin after competing solely with the brand in GT3 machinery since entering the IMSA WeatherTech championship in 2020.

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“We are excited to see what the 2025 season holds,” said Heart of Racing team principal, Ian James. “It’s a bit crazy to look back and see where we started versus where we are currently. We ultimately decided on a GTD entry as it complements our all-pro GTP program and serves as a useful rung on the ladder. This week though, we are set on chasing the GTD PRO championship with the No. 23 team. Once the season ends, we will put our full focus on 2025.”

Heart of Racing, driver Ross Gunn and Aston Martin go into the Motul Petit Le Mans season finale with a shot at the GTD PRO championship. For the final two races of the season, the team has gone all-in on GTD PRO to bolster its chances of capturing the titles.

Heart of Racing had previously announced that it would run a two-car Hypercar team with the Valkyrie in the World Endurance Championship. The team has also been running two cars in Pirelli GT World Challenge America. Driver lineups for the IMSA and WEC campaigns will be finalized at a later date.

Aston Martin chief wary of team going ‘full destruction mode’ to finish season strongly

While team principal Mike Krack wants Aston Martin to improve its car in all areas and progress further up the competitive order in Formula 1, he cautions that the team “should not go into full destruction mode” in the process. Aston Martin has …

Aston Martin has scored 12 points in the past two races in Singapore and Azerbaijan, having picked up just six points from the four rounds before that. Those last two results have come courtesy of impressive performances from Fernando Alonso but Aston Martin has been well off the pace of the top four teams and Krack says the overall level of competitiveness is something the team needs to address.

“Everyone is putting upgrades on, removing part of them, or removing them all, going back to a previous spec, so the subject is not an easy one,” Krack said. “I wish we would be in a different position but we are not. Maybe others have also understood [development] quicker than we did. We have to be self-critical — these results we have should not hide the fact we are not where we want to be.

“Now we should not go into full destruction mode as a team, but we have to make sure that the positive results we are accumulating are not hiding from the facts we have to improve, or that we are not where we wanted to be.

“And that is critical as a whole team, as from the outside you see you are scoring, scoring, scoring, scoring, but the four teams ahead of us are always scoring more than three or four times the points per race and that is what we are seeing at the end of the day.”

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Like many teams, Krack says there is likely to be an upgrade introduced for the upcoming United States Grand Prix that will target a wide area of the car’s performance rather than one specific weakness.

“I mean, there’s a couple of problems with the current car,” he conceded. “Up and down the pit lane it’s the same — the downforce and the balance, and in which order it depends on what kind of corners and circuits you’re having. [In Singapore] and Baku it’s short corners, Monza’s last corner is never stopping, but we have to improve both, as both are not good enough.

“I think it’s both [mechanical and aerodynamic], and it’s always difficult to completely discern them but we have to make a good step in both, because from the debrief the drivers are not happy either when the speed is very low.”

Aston Martin is comfortably fifth in the constructors’ championship again this season but has a best result of fifth place this year, compared to eight podiums — three of them runner-up finishes — in 2023.

Horner says Aston Martin’s Newey announcement ‘premature’

Red Bull Racing principal Christian Horner says Aston Martin was premature to celebrate the arrival of Adrian Newey while the designer is still serving out the final months of his contract at Horner’s team. Newey (pictured at left, above, with …

Newey (pictured at left, above, with Horner) was confirmed as managing technical partner and a new shareholder in a large-scale announcement event during the week at the team’s state-of-the-art new headquarters. The 65-year-old appeared in front of Aston Martin branding, talked at length about the company and appeared on stage with team owner Lawrence Stroll alongside drivers Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll.

The legendary designer announced in May that he would quit Red Bull Racing, negotiating an early exit from his contract that would allow him start work for a rival next March. But he remains tied to Red Bull via the RB17 hypercar program until then, and he’s also appeared at several races in Red Bull Racing team kit.

Asked about the incongruousness of appearing at another team’s factory while still on the Red Bull Racing payroll, Horner suggested Aston Martin had pulled the trigger too early on welcoming Newey to Silverstone.

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“It was obviously a large announcement by Aston,” he said. “Adrian has always tended to do his own thing.

“They chose to celebrate it perhaps potentially slightly prematurely before he’s finished his contract with Red Bull Racing, but obviously it was a big moment for that team.”

Newey reportedly returned to work at Red Bull’s headquarters at Milton Keynes, around 20 miles east of Silverstone-based Aston Martin, at the end of his presentation event.

Despite the eyebrow-raising scheduling, Horner said he would be sad to see Newey eventually swipe out of the building for the final time, even if it had long become clear that the title-winning engineer had his heart set on working elsewhere.

“It wasn’t a great surprise,” he said. “I think it was becoming clearer and clearer that was the route that he was going to go rather than into retirement or any other team.

“Obviously it’ll be a new challenge for him, and we’ll be sad to see it when he leaves next year but wish him all the best for the future. I look back with great fondness at the 20 years almost that we spent together and obviously the highs and lows during that period.

“Adrian is obviously a very creative guy. He’s not your average designer. I think he’s the only person still in Formula 1 working on a drawing board.

“He’s unique in many respects, and I think that Aston will obviously look to draw upon his huge experience. But we look forward to the future, and I think we’re well positioned for that.”

Newey primed for ‘very intense’ start to Aston Martin stint

Adrian Newey expects his initial time at Aston Martin to be “very intense” as he tries to integrate himself into the team at the same time as catching up on the 2026 technical regulations. The current Red Bull chief technical officer will be able to …

Adrian Newey expects his initial time at Aston Martin to be “very intense” as he tries to integrate himself into the team at the same time as catching up on the 2026 technical regulations.

The current Red Bull chief technical officer will be able to start at Aston Martin in March of next year, with the new technical regulations being released by the FIA for teams to work on from the beginning of January. Newey says it will lead to a particularly challenging spell with his new team, but one he is relishing.

“So I start in March ’25. It’s going to be a very intense period of course because by then the aerodynamic rules for 2026 will have been out for two months,” Newey said. “So I will have the challenge of understanding how the team operates, getting to know everybody and trying to lend my guidance, I suppose is perhaps the best way of putting it, and learning to work with the team. Because that’s what I enjoy doing, working with everybody.

“So, starting two months behind the ball but with the extra challenge of getting to know everybody and understand how everybody works. It’s going to be a very intense period, for sure, but I’m very looking forward to that challenge and getting on with it.

“What do I hope to bring here? It’s a very good question. I have no agenda, I just like working with everybody and hopefully with that sort of spirit we can all extract the best out of each other.”

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The move to Aston Martin also sees Newey continue working with Red Bull’s current power unit partner Honda, which was another plus point when it came to picking his next destination.

“[Honda is] a very impressive company,” he said. “They’re quite humble and modest in their promises, but experience so far has always been that what they promise, they deliver, and they’re very straightforward to work with.

“The ’26 rules of course are an opportunity because they’ll be a reset for everybody. Whether we’ll be able to capitalize on that or not, we just don’t know. I never spend too long pressing about these things. You’ve just got to get on and do the best job you can and what will be will be at that point.”

Aston Martin says clerical error led to Heart of Racing tech violation at VIR

Aston Martin has issued a statement explaining that a mislabeling on its part of a damper component led to the Heart of Racing team’s No. 27 Aston Martin Vantage GT3 Evo being stripped of its second-place finish in GTD in the IMSA WeatherTech …

“We support IMSA in its diligence in the application of the technical rules which govern the championship,” the statement read. “This is a big part of why IMSA is a fantastic championship, and one that Aston Martin Racing [AMR] takes great pride in competing in.

“Unfortunately in this case, The Heart of Racing, through no fault of its own, have fallen foul of an AMR clerical error in relation to the labeling of an AMR homologated damper mount. Whilst this error did not impact performance in any way, the team have lost a result which was well-earned and deserved based on their on-track performance. The issue has been identified and resolved internally.”

Newey joins Aston Martin as managing technical partner and shareholder

Aston Martin has confirmed the signing of Adrian Newey, ending months of speculation about the future of the legendary designer. Newey will join the team as managing technical partner, but also a shareholder as well – a first for him in his …

Aston Martin has confirmed the signing of Adrian Newey, ending months of speculation about the future of the legendary designer.

Newey will join the team as managing technical partner, but also a shareholder as well – a first for him in his almost-40-year F1 career, which has also included championship-winning stints with Williams and McLaren in the 1990s and 2000s.

“I am thrilled to be joining the Aston Martin Aramco Formula One Team,” said Newey. “I have been hugely inspired and impressed by the passion and commitment that Lawrence brings to everything he is involved with. Lawrence is determined to create a world-beating team. He is the only majority team owner who is actively engaged in the sport.

“His commitment is demonstrated in the development of the new AMR Technology Campus and wind tunnel at Silverstone, which are not only state of the art but have a layout that creates a great environment to work in.

“Together with great partners like Honda and Aramco, they have all the key pieces of infrastructure needed to make Aston Martin a world championship-winning team and I am very much looking forward to helping reach that goal.”

Newey’s signing is the latest statement of intent by the team led by Lawrence Stroll, which moved into a new factory last season, is currently building a new wind tunnel and has signed a factory engine deal with Honda which will begin in 2026. Aston Martin also signed Newey’s former Red Bull colleague Dan Fallows as technical director and former Mercedes engine at the start of 2022 and Andy Cowell as Group CEO earlier this year.

“This is huge news. Adrian is the best in the world at what he does – he is at the top of his game – and I am incredibly proud that he is joining Aston Martin,” said Stroll. “It’s the biggest story since the Aston Martin name returned to the sport and another demonstration of our ambition to build a Formula 1 team capable of fighting for world championships. As soon as Adrian became available, we knew we had to make it happen.”

Stroll said that he made the move to sign Newey after his exit from Red Bull was publicly announced in April.

“Our initial conversations confirmed that there was a shared desire to collaborate in a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Adrian is a racer and one of the most competitive people I have ever met.

“When he saw what we have built at Silverstone – our incredible AMR Technology Campus, the talented group of people we have assembled and the latest wind tunnel in the sport – he quickly understood what we are trying to achieve.

“We mean business – and so does he. Adrian shares our hunger and ambition, he believes in this project, and he will help us write the next chapter in Aston Martin’s Formula 1 story.”

Newey-designed cars have won 12 Constructors’ titles and 13 Drivers’ titles since 1992 for Williams, McLaren, and Red Bull, with Nigel Mansell, Alain Prost, Damon Hill, Jacques Villenueve, Mika Hakkinen, Sebastian Vettel, and Max Verstappen among the drivers that have taken his cars to the championship.

And while the move to Aston Martin represents a fresh challenge for him in F1, it isn’t a totally new relationship, with Newey having heavy involvement in the company’s Valkyrie hypercar project when it was aligned with Red Bull.