In what is one of the bigger kick in the balls for fans in recent memory, Aston Martin and the Heart of Racing announced on Thursday morning that will be foregoing the Rolex 24 at Daytona to instead debut their new Valkyrie LMH a month later for the Qatar 1812km for the WEC.
In other words - BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
For someone that will be attending the Rolex in person, along with 50,000+ others, the disappointment is immeasurable. For months we've been anticipating seeing the V-12 prototype roll around the Daytona banks, yet recently the Heart of Racing and AMR stayed mum on the idea of the car being ready for the Rolex 24, and after weeks of remaining non-committal to the idea they finally pulled the lid off the can of the craptastic news.
Instead of Daytona, the Valkyrie will make it's North American debut at the 12 Hours of Sebring in March.
It marks the second year in a row that an eagerly-anticipated program skips out on the Rolex to instead debut across the world in the desert after Lamborghini followed the same path for their SC63. In truth, as we saw, the car was not ready to race competitively and those struggles followed Lamborghini throughout the season and has impacted their 2025 season to the tune of bailing on the WEC to instead load up on their IMSA campaign.
The HoR and AMR will take the additional time to continue working on the car, which on paper yes is important and crucial to ensuring that the car, team, drivers, mechanics, etc. are all ready to undertake a grueling opening season with racing plans scheduled around the world. The long-term vision that a team has with their particular car will take priority over any potential short-term gain, and highlighted by the incredible cost and complicated nature of these machines, you can't bring a poorly prepared car to a competitive event and hope that things stick together, never mind trying to do so in a 24 hour endurance right out the gate.
HOWEVER....we have an article to write today, and the question has to be asked - where does the blame go for the car not being ready to go for the first race of the season? I choose to split the blame equally between Aston Martin, the FIA, and the homologation process that teams have to go through. First, for Aston Martin, what about the need to get the car on track and record as much data as humanly possible? No one is expecting the team to finish first overall, and good, bad or indifferent, where's the push to get the car competing against the other cars on the grid? There is no better way to do that than oh I don't know, roll it out in the first race of the season? If the car dies after 10 laps or finds the finish line, who cares it's all gravy if we're focused primarily on developing the routine needed to support the program.
Second, to the FIA, they run both the WEC and Formula 1 and I bet you they pulled some strings behind the scenes to have their shiny new bullet debut in the desert under their terms and not IMSAs. Is there any actual truth to that accusation and do they relate at all? Who knows but I said it anyway.
And lastly, for the ridiculous homologation process, something needs to change so these teams aren't left scrambling to get these multi-million dollar mega-complicated racing machines up to racing standards in what, five or six months? Things are kept so under wraps before being unveiled that you barely have any assurance that the cars are moving along or not, and then teams/drivers have a handful of weeks to get their shit together before building their program into something that can be competitive from Day 1. Give these teams more time for R&D and remove these terrible deadlines that just complicate matters.
If you can't tell by now, I'm the saltiest SOB around because it feels like the 4th of July, Halloween and Christmas have all been canceled and rolled into one giant ball of bubble-bursting disappointment. We'll still have fun at the Rolex, but it will feel different without the Valkyrie in attendance. We'll just have to buy a ticket to Sebring in March.
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