Image via Aston Martin
This weekend, the Aston Martin Valkyrie makes its IMSA debut at the Mobil 1 12 Hours of Sebring. To get fans pumped for the endurance race, IMSA recently did a video walkaround of one of the Team THOR cars with Ian James, the team principal.
An R35 Nissan GT-R just set a new world record in the quarter mile.
What’s cool about the racecar is it uses the road-going Aston Martin Valkyrie as the base, the team building an endurance machine off that. In fact, it’s the only entry in IMSA’s GTP category that’s derived from a road-legal car.
Among the technological wonders of the IMSA Valkyrie is the carbon fiber chassis that’s been designed specifically for the series. However, the overall shape of the body is different, allowing air to flow around and through in ways you don’t see with other racecars.
In the chassis is a torsion bar suspension with a third leaf in the rear sitting up high by the engine, all of it highly tunable. There are adjustable roll bars, which are controlled by the driver from the cockpit via cable controls.
The Cosworth-built 6.5-liter V12 has an 11,000 rpm redline, which you can hear when it speeds by on the track. However, instead of the 1,000-bhp pumping out like in the production hypercar, the racecar version only makes 680-bhp per hypercar regulations, so it is detuned.
James says his drivers “love” the engine, describing it as “tactile” and “smooth.” To your average person, that means nothing, but if you’re an enthusiast or even better have done some racing, you know what a difference smooth power delivery makes.
But that V12 makes the Valkyrie not only sound amazing but stick out in the field where small engines combined with a hybrid electric drive system are used by all the other teams.
However, you won’t hear the howling V12 as the Valkyrie is leaving pit lane, thanks to a fascinating device called “the Startinator.” That sounds make up, but James explains in the video it’s a starter motor, alternator, and a motor all in one. In fact, that little box is what’s used for the hypercar’s reverse gear, not the transmission.
Image via Aston Martin
