Marque co-owner Lawrence Stroll, who led a buy-out of the British manufacturer in early 2020 and renamed his Racing Point Formula 1 squad as Aston Martin, has revealed an intent to return to the Le Mans 24 Hours as a factory.

He told to a group of automotive journalists during a briefing at last week’s launch of the Aston Martin AMR22 F1 car that the marque is “in discussions” to go back to the French enduro and that the return would come “in whichever category aligns with the message we are trying to deliver”.

Stroll has stated that the Aston Martin Performance Technologies division being set-up within the new F1 facility under construction at Silverstone will become in involved in the brand’s line of mid-engined supercars, including the Valkyrie conceived by Red Bull Racing technical director Adrian Newey.

This ties in with indications that the Valkyrie LMH programme, which was put on hold early in 2020, could be about to be revived.

The new performance division will employ resources within the F1 organisation freed up by the budget cap introduced for the 2021 season.

These could be deployed on the Valkyrie LMH, which was originally under the remit of the Canadian Multimatic organisation that partnered with Aston in development of the road car.

Aston Martin has already announced a track-only version of the Valkyrie, tagged the AMR Pro.

It made much of the racing origins of a car that is longer and wider than the standard Valkyrie and…