Aston Martin Vantage scores third at Road America; Valkyrie takes best IMSA finish of 2026

Aston Martin's Vantage GT3, its most successful racing car, delivered a sixth GTD podium in seven IMSA rounds at Road America. Works driver Valentin Hasse Clot, AMR Academy candidate Marius Fossard and Trenton Estep finished third in class for Car Blanche. The Vantage GT3, which leads the IMSA GTD category with seven of ten races complete, shares its architecture with the Vantage road car and uses a bonded aluminium chassis and twin-turbo 4.0-litre V8.

Car Blanche, run by YRB Racing, made its IMSA debut at Watkins Glen less than two months ago and has now finished on the podium in both of its GTD appearances. Hasse Clot qualified third in class and returned to GTD after the team competed in GTD Pro at the previous race in Canadian Tire Motorsport Park. Unhelpfully timed Full-Course Yellow periods cost the crew ground in the fourth hour, but a final pit stop with over an hour remaining dropped the car to 13th before Hasse Clot climbed into the top five and then passed two more cars to finish third. Twenty-four hours earlier, Estep and Allen Patten had given the team its first victory by winning the IMSA Michelin Pilot Challenge in a Vantage GT4.

The Heart of Racing (THOR) Team's #27 Vantage led GTD for much of the first four hours after Zacharie Robichon qualified second. But as incidents increased, all pit stops in the final two hours took place under Full-Course Yellow, and more than 20 cars bunching in the pits cost Tom Gamble track position, dropping the car outside the podium. A post-race penalty then relegated it to 15th in class. Despite this, Dudu Barrichello leads the GTD Drivers' Championship and THOR tops the teams' standings, while Aston Martin is second in the GTD Michelin Endurance Cup, two points behind with one round to go.

After qualifying eighth in GTP, Gunn started the race, but two drive-through penalties dropped the #23 car off the lead lap. Strong pace and a strategic call brought the duo back onto the lead lap with 90 minutes to go, and they climbed from 10th to seventh as the final hour began. Roman De Angelis, the 2022 IMSA GTD champion with THOR, then moved through the field in a chaotic final hour full of incidents and Full-Course Yellows to finish fifth, having run second on the road mid-stint. This was Valkyrie's best IMSA result since Gunn, De Angelis and Alex Riberas placed second at last year's Motul Petit Le Mans, and Valkyrie has now achieved top-10 GTP finishes in six of seven races this season, a significant improvement over its debut 2025 campaign.

Valkyrie is the first Le Mans Hypercar (LMH) produced by Aston Martin and the only hypercar contesting both IMSA and the FIA World Endurance Championship in 2026. It is also the first LMH car of any kind to compete in IMSA and the only GTP car derived from a road-legal hypercar. The competition version, developed from the Valkyrie production car by Aston Martin and THOR, uses a race-optimised carbon fibre chassis and a modified 6.5-litre V12 that revs to 11,000rpm and produces over 1000bhp in standard form, though hypercar regulations limit it to 500kW (680bhp). Three IMSA races remain, but only two for GTP: Indianapolis Motor Speedway (18-20 September) and the 10-hour Petit Le Mans at Road Atlanta (30 September – 3 October).