Aston Martin THOR Team’s Marco Sørensen took ‘a lot of positives’ from last month’s Rolex 6 Hours of São Paulo, after running competitively inside the top ten on the Aston Martin Valkyrie’s most encouraging appearance to-date in the FIA World Endurance Championship.
As early as Friday afternoon, Harry Tincknell hinted at the British prototype’s potential in Brazil – only its fifth outing at the international pinnacle of the discipline – by lapping fifth-quickest amongst the 18 high-calibre Hypercar contenders in the second free practice session, with Sørensen’s driving partner Alex Riberas not far behind in eighth.
The V12-engined Valkyrie showed promising pace again in FP3 around the resurfaced Autódromo José Carlos Pace, and in qualifying, Riberas missed out on advancing to the Hyperpole top ten shootout by a scant 37 thousandths-of-a-second, with the #009 entry agonisingly knocked out in the dying moments by 24 Hours of Le Mans hero Robert Kubica in the AF Corse Ferrari.
Nonetheless, 11th place marked comfortably the team’s best grid slot thus far in FIA WEC, and that theme continued into the race, as multiple LMGTE champion Sørensen pulled off a succession of bold overtakes to climb to eighth in the opening 20 minutes, confidently taking the fight to last year’s winner, the #8 Toyota.
Riberas then took over behind the wheel for the middle phase of the six-hour contest, posting the Valkyrie’s fastest lap along the way – the 12th-quickest overall, better than Laurens Vanthoor and Kévin Estre in the #6 Porsche and Sébastien Bourdais in the second-place finishing Cadillac. His Danish team-mate returned to the cockpit later on, ultimately taking the chequered flag 13th, sandwiched between the factory Ferraris and Toyotas.
“Every race we go to this year, we’re a little bit on the back foot regarding data,” Sørensen mused, “but Interlagos was quite fun. Being our first time there, with the high tyre degradation and having to double stint, it was really difficult to judge how much to push.
“It was nice to be in the mix early on; we made some progress in the first stint, but in the second, it got very tough as the tyres went off. We dropped back, probably because the others understood the tyre degradation a bit better than we did, but that’s part of our learning curve and all-in-all, there were a lot of positives.
“It was the first race where we’ve been able to fight other cars on-track and keep some of them behind us. I say it a lot, but we just have to keep on improving. Everyone in the team is here because eventually, we want to reach the front of the grid, and when we get to Austin next, hopefully we’ll be in an even better window with a better car.”
“It was a very positive weekend,” echoed Riberas, “although there were some mixed emotions at the end as we were slightly disappointed with the final result after fighting for the top ten throughout.
“It was the first time this year that we’d even been able to dream of finishing in the points. That obviously brings with it some kind of expectation, but the truth is that six hours around Interlagos is a very demanding task for a car in its first year.
“Still, overall we took a big step forward, and we will continue finding ways to improve. I’m sure we will be one step closer to the front in Austin, which is obviously the home race for the team and my favourite track as well. I’m very much looking forward to that one already.”
Indeed, round six of the 2025 FIA WEC campaign at Texas’ Circuit of The Americas will be a big event for the US-registered outfit, with Team Principal Ian James hopeful that the Valkyrie can take another leap up the order when the season resumes from its summer break on 5-7 September.
“All weekend (in Brazil), we made further progress,” reflected the British-born racer, who simultaneously competes in the series’ LMGT3 category. “Again, we proved the reliability of the car – I think we’re pretty confident in that department now – and the drivers are becoming more comfortable in it, but it’s still the early stages of a long journey. Some of the cars we’re racing against are so seasoned and refined that the expectation can’t be that we’re at their level yet.
“We’re making incremental improvements every time, and I think we can be proud to be holding our heads high against the likes of Toyota and Ferrari. The other manufacturers don’t really have much low-hanging fruit left, whereas we still do and this team is nimble – we can move fast. We’ll keep working hard and now we look forward to going to COTA.”
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