Aston Martin’s Le Mans Valkyrie Racer Won’t Be A Hybrid

The Aston Martin Valkyrie that will compete in FIA’s new World Endurance Championship ‘hypercar’ class won’t feature a hybrid powertrain like the road car.

Talking to SportsCar365 over the weekend, Aston Martin’s sporting president David King indicated that there’s no need for it to use a hybrid powertrain because cars competing in the new class will be capped at around 750 HP. By comparison, the road-legal Valkyrie delivers a much more substantial 1160 HP.

“It’s a question that answers itself fairly easily by the choice of engine of the Valkyrie,” King said. “A combination of the electric and internal combustion engine power has to add up to a certain amount and we’ve got a massive V12 engine that we’re going to detune to make it suitable for racing. The road car does have some hybrid elements to it. The race car won’t.”

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It is claimed that Aston’s desire to race the Valkyrie without a hybrid powertrain played a key role in the regulations being altered in June to allow for non-hybrid vehicles.

“You wouldn’t have an engine of that size and weight, and then add the hybrid elements and electric drive elements,” King said. “We wouldn’t put a smaller engine in it so that we could have a hybrid either. That’s why the whole four-wheel-drive/two-wheel-drive equivalence debate was so important leading up to the finalization of the regulations.”

Toyota is the only other big manufacturer so far to commit to the hypercar class, where it will enter its hybrid-powered GR Super Sport hypercar. Scuderia Cameron Glickenhaus will also compete, and its hypercar will also be a hybrid.