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One of many extraordinarily difficult ways of qualifying for an FIA Super License — the slip that allows you to race F1 cars — is to amass enough points through years of racing in lower series. A driver could place 4th in IndyCar three years in a row and still fall short of qualifying. The sole requirement to drive an Aston Martin Valkyrie, which is more powerful and can corner faster than an F1 car? $3.2 million.
It’s hard to wrap my head around how bad of an idea this is. And it makes me so happy.
Aston’s already reported that the Valkyrie will be powered by a 1,130 horsepower V12 and will weigh a scant 2,271 pounds. To put that in perspective, that’s nearly the same weight as a smart car with the power of 13 smart cars.
Naturally, in a car that weighs that little, a ton of the grip that makes this car able to corner at 4G is aerodynamics. Aston has casually thrown around the figure 4,000 pounds of downforce. That’s 4,000 pounds of grip that will be there at a certain speed, and will be completely absent if you’re not going fast enough.
Newly released photos highlight the Valkyrie’s interior and exterior designs and further the perception that this is a genuinely bonkers car. The entire vehicle has been sculpted and molded in the name of aerodynamics, putting the driver into an “F1 style” seating position (feet above hips) and requiring Aston Martin to 3D scan each buyer and sculpt the interior to perfectly accommodate their physique (regardless of whether they’re a Lewis or a Flavio). Nevermind convincing your date to exit through the porthole.
The good news for the world’s Sheikh population is that most of the Valkyries produced will almost certainly be garage queens, where their F1-beating performance figures will remain safely in the abstract. Lord help the Instagram influencer who decides to peel out of cars-and-coffee though.
