Aston Martin pauses its Le Mans Hypercar project

That's it, it's finally official. But in no way surprising... As we mentioned to you many times in our columns, starting in October, the project Le Mans HypercarAston Martin was never very solid.

Should we be surprised when we know that it results from the association of the two biggest fiascos in the history ofEndurance modern, namely the AMR-One made by Aston Martin in 2011 and the Nissan GT-R LM Nismo in 2015, a project that we owe to Andy Palmer, who then left Japan to take the helm of the firm of Gaydon? Two cars having conceded at the time more than 20 seconds to their rivals credited with pole position in the qualifying exercise.

Aston Martin therefore chose Wednesday February 19 at 9:00 a.m. to announce the news, 24 hours after publishing a video of Max Verstappen et Alexander albon having fun behind the wheel of the stock Valkyrie.

We will allow ourselves, once again, to express some doubts about the seriousness of the brand's communication, which chose exactly the moment when winter testing begins. F1 to send your press release. Perhaps hoping that this goes unnoticed... And as we anticipated at the end of January, Aston Martin is using convergence WEC-IMSA and the acceptance of LMDh as an excuse.

“This crucial change regarding Endurance has pushed us to make the decision to pause our commitment to the Hypercar category of the WEC in order to give us the necessary time to calmly assess the situation of this premier class and our place within it. of her » underlines David King, vice president of the brand, head of special operations and president of Aston Martin Racing.

Andy Palmer, president of Aston Martin Lagonda, assures him that “ Aston Martin's desire to compete for overall victory at the 24 Hours of Le Mans remains intact, but it is true that we must reconsider our position in view of the significant changes in the landscape that we had not anticipated when we We committed last year.

We entered thinking that we were going to race against cars of a similar design to ours (two assertions that we consider to be completely false, the convergence with IMSA already being at the center of the debates at the time and the Toyota already being of a different design to that which Aston Martin had opted for. Editor’s note). The situation has changed and it makes sense for us to press pause and reconsider our options. »

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Will Aston Martin come back with an LMDh based on a chassis designed by its partner Multimatic? Nothing is less certain and whatever happens, the observation of failure for the brand as for the WEC is there. James Bond's favorite brand and his boss Andy Palmer are once again making a fool of themselves in the eyes of the motorsport world. Why did you formalize this return last June while knowing that the start of 2019 was a financial disaster for the brand with sales in free fall?

Because it must be remembered, the British manufacturer is going through a very bad time financially, to the point that a consortium led by Lawrence Stroll has entered into the brand's capital to author of 16,7% on January 31, to first save it, then take control of it soon with a capital injection announced close to 500 million euros.

This same Stroll who, at the same time, announced that he would rename Racing Point F1 – of which he is the owner – Aston Martin from 2021. And as you might have guessed, a brand in such poor health cannot afford to run two racing programs. 'such a large forehead.

It remains to be seen what Multimatic and Red Bull, the two other entities at the head of this tripartite project and which also work together with Aston Martin on the different Valkyrie models available for sale.

No one will come out of this story better... and certainly not the WEC, condemned to survive at least one more season before hoping to see the arrival of LMDh, a concept from the DPi which, as proof, should have been adopted much earlier. Many players in the discipline have been pushing in this direction for a long time, but have not been successful, the fault in particular of… Aston Martin, which demanded to be able to run with its production Valkyrie as a base. But the incessant changes to the rules don't help the competitors to see things clearly either, hoping that this time the rules are indeed fixed because it is, in any case, impossible to please everyone.

Toyota will therefore continue to spend several tens of millions of euros per year to achieve victories without any flavor and offering it no glory since acquired against competition not playing in the same league, especially since Rebellion does not will not even be there in 2020-2021 to give him the answer, however artificial it may be. How long time will seem to us...