They’re already waiting for us. It’s late at night when we roll into the first petrol station on French soil. The shop is shuttered, it’s pay-at-pump only, but the scantly lit forecourt is full of carspotters wielding phones, cameras and gimbals, eager for a closer look at the Aston Martin Valkyrie. Perhaps someone on the Eurotunnel tipped them off, or they’ve spotted us on social media. On our journey through England and onto the train, Aston Martin’s hypercar has been captured on camera at every turn. So far, France is no different. I feel like I’m driving a four-wheeled paparazzi target.
Our journey began earlier this morning at the Aston Martin Aramco F1 ™ Team Technology Campus (AMRTC). No doubt somewhere inside is Adrian Newey’s famous drawing board, on which the Formula 1® designer and Managing Technical Partner originally penned the Aston Martin Valkyrie. The real-life machine is waiting outside for us, sunlight glinting off its radically surfaced carbon fibre.
We’re not taking it to Silverstone over the road -we have an even more significant circuit as our destination. In 2025, Aston Martin makes its return to the top class at the 24 Hours of Le Mans with the Aston Martin Valkyrie Hypercar. To mark the occasion, we’re retracing the steps the factory team took back in 1959, the year it triumphed at Le Mans with a one-two finish in its beautiful DBR 1 cars.
Climbing aboard the Aston Martin Valkyrie at the beginning of any journey, large or small, is a unique thrill. Reach beneath the blade-like upper body surface for the door release, then lift the roof-hinged door upwards. It feels lighter than air. Drop into the lay-back driving position, lower the door and watch it automatically whir-click itself into its latched position, sealing you from the outside world. Clip the steering wheel into place, watch the screens come to life, and hear the car do likewise – clicking, whirring and vibrating as it wakes. Place the intercom system’s noise-cancelling headphones over your ears, then press the starter. All hell breaks loose: the Aston Martin Valkyrie’s 6.5-litre naturally aspirated Vl 2 develops more than 1,000 horsepower on its own (total power, augmented by the hybrid system’s electric motor, is 1, 155ps), and plenty of volume. Those headphones come in handy.
The electric motor takes care of low-speed manoeuvres, making it as easy as pie to pull away smoothly and negotiate traffic. On the M25 and the Dartford Crossing, the Aston Martin Valkyrie feels as out of place among the surrounding vans, lorries and SU Vs as a UFO landing at Heathrow. In France, it’s the same: sharing the streets with sauntering superminis and even the odd Mehari buggy, as we reach our overnight stop at Le Touquet, is a surreal tableau.
In 1959, the team made their way via cross-channel ferry and the old Silver City air ferry services. Company cars included two special Lagonda shooting brakes. Another car was also driven over: DP199, the prototype DB4GT, which ran in the race. I want to follow their route as closely as possible, and we pause to lay out an eBay-sourced 1959 road map over Valkyrie. Then, as now, it’s a relatively straightforward drive to Le Mans, mostly main roads interspersed with urban sections. But autoroute tedium and stop-start town traffic are not the environments the Aston Martin Valkyrie was designed for. We decide to follow main roads as far as Rouen, once home to a fearsome road circuit – the Aston Martin DBR 1 won here in 1960- but, today, virtually no visible trace of the track remains. From there, we change tack and strike out into the countryside.
I’m glad we did. A patchwork quilt of fields is draped over gently rolling hills, and there’s not a soul in sight. The Valkyrie can stretch its legs a little. It’s intense – having so much power, with minimal weight and inertia to blunt its edge, the Valkyrie ferociously fast, yet oddly calm. The steering is rapid in response – you barely need a flex of your wrists to introduce the car to a corner – yet measured, and beautifully insulated from bumps and cambers. You feel them, but they don’t corrupt the steering. The active suspension is the same. It soaks up the most dilapidated of surfaces, and mid-corner lumps and ridges never unsettle the car. Yet we’re riding low enough for the aerodynamic channels beneath to be hard at work. In the video displays that act as rear view mirrors, I can see a rooster tail of dust high in the air.
It’s an intuitive car, and you can drive it as fast or as slow as you wish. The former demands some self-restraint. On roads like this, there’s seemingly no limit to the Aston Martin Valkyrie’s performance or abilities. I don’t want to stop, but the twin demands of time constraint and the need to find a petrol station mean it’s time to resume the main route.
We have one more overnight stop, at a historically resonant location. The Hôtel de France in La Chartre-surle- Loire was the base camp for the Aston Martin works team in the 50s and 60s. The hotel was a favourite haunt of team manager John Wyer, who returned every year alongside some of motorsport’s greatest names. The walls are framed with photographs, the elegant rooms heavy with history. The cars were worked on in a side alley alongside the hotel, framed by ivy (one of the more photogenic locations racing cars have been prepared in), before making the journey through the countryside to the circuit.
We do the same, taking a detour to drive the track sections that ordinarily function as public roads. It’s a spinetingling sensation to drive the Mulsanne Straight and winding Arnage and Indianapolis sections in the low-slung Aston Martin Valkyrie, skimming the painted apex kerbs amid trucks and traffic. Once again, the car-spotters are back: Instagram will later be full of footage of the hypercar as it pulls up to the Le Mans circuit gates, and we’re ushered through, into the pitlane and onto the circuit itself.
Tantalisingly, we can’t turn any laps: the track is being prepared for the race, overalled workers painstakingly painting the blue and yellow kerbs. But it’s a special feeling to park beneath the deserted Dunlop bridge and reflect on the journey. We’ve covered hundreds of kilometres to be here. We’ve street-parked in sleepy French villages, negotiated traffic jams and turned hundreds of heads.
The Aston Martin Valkyrie is a car you can really drive, which gives you back what you put into it on a country road as much as it does on a racetrack. It’s left me with some indelible memories, and countless car-spotters along the way likewise. And it’s made the more special knowing that same V12 sound will soon be ringing from the Mulsanne Straight in anger as the racing Aston Martin Valkyrie Hypercars take on their longest day.
Listen to the sound of the Aston Martin Valkyrie on board below.
