Treat Your Ears To 7 Minutes Of The Aston Martin DBR9's Screaming V12

The Aston Valkyrie gave us the tantalising prospect of V12 engines returning to Le Mans. The company’s World Endurance Championship plans with the hypercar are now on hold, however. With investor Lawrence Stroll seemingly more interested in making Aston Martin a works F1 team, it’s safe to assume the hypercar will never turn a wheel in anger in the motorsport world.

Happily, we can at least wonder what might have been, thanks to Aston having a back catalogue full of V12 racing cars. There was the troubled but gorgeous AMR-One LMP1 car, the V12 Vantage GT3, and my personal favourite, the DBR9.

Built for the now-defunct GT1 regulations, the car shared its ‘VH’ platform and some of the V12 engine with the DB9 road car, but precious little else was carried over. It’s clad in carbon fibre panels, and tips the scales at just 1170kg - a considerable saving of 600kg compared to its distantly related showroom counterpart.

Aston Martin built 19 - 10 for its factory racing efforts while nine that went to privateers. The car was officially fielded from 2005 to 2011, taking the 2006 Le Mans Series driver’s and constructor’s titles in the process. Some still race today, including the car you see here, filmed competing in the Endurance Racing Legends series at Zandvoort, Monza and the Nürburgring.

And yes, the noise is sensational.