Gunn on Long Beach Experience for Valkyrie Street Course Debut

Photo: Jake Galstad/IMSA

Ross Gunn said he and Heart of Racing Team are banking on their previous experience of Long Beach for the Aston Martin Valkyrie’s street course debut this weekend.

The V12-powered LMH-based prototype is set for its first sprint race after contesting both the FIA World Endurance Championship Qatar 1812km and Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring, with Saturday’s 100-minute IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship contest set to offer up a new set of challenges to the Arizona-based team.

“This is the first time that we’ll do some mileage on a street course,” Gunn told Sportscar365. “The good thing is that we’ve done this event as a team many times.

“Roman [De Angelis] had a great race here last year. We won here in 2022. So we have experience of the track.

“But it’s obviously a completely new platform for us.

“I’ve been using this word a lot lately. It’s going to be a big learning curve weekend for us.

“We need a clean FP1; I think that’s very clear as the track is going to be quite dusty, but we can’t make any mistakes and pick up as many laps as possible will be essential.”

Gunn said they’ve been able to take lessons learned from the car’s recent WeatherTech Championship debut at Sebring, where Gunn, Roman De Angelis and Alex Riberas recorded a respectable ninth place overall finish.

“We’ve been working hard on the sim,” said Gunn. “Roman has done quite a lot of days and I was on the sim this week and there is some crossover some ways with the setup.

“But we’re constantly evolving and are constantly finding new things that are working on the car.

“If we can keep on that trajectory, I think that’s the important goal for this weekend, really.

“We went in with the mindset of finishing [at Sebring] and we ticked that box in a very positive way.

“The pace at times was in the mix. Obviously we ended up finishing two laps back but it was a very satisfying weekend to be finishing but also finishing ahead of some people that had been doing this for a few years.

“In all honestly, this weekend… It will be a shorter race. We’re going into the sprint part of the year, so you kind of expect it to finish.

“But now it would be nice to try unlock some pace in the car and keep getting closer.”

Gunn added: “I think it’s going to be a big challenge to be there or there-abouts, but if we can keep getting closer, that’s going to be a great result for us.”

Team principal Ian James, meanwhile, added that he expects the program to continue to make gains this weekend.

“As I stated in Sebring, we just expect to get a little bit better every weekend,” he told Sportscar365.

“We’re learning the car better; we’re understanding it. The driver are more comfortable with it.

“I don’t know what it’s really going to be in this kind of environment, on this type of track, because we haven’t run it before, but I expect us to inch a little bit closer towards the front.”