Genesis is launching a racing team named Genesis Magma Racing, which will compete with two-car teams in WEC starting in 2026 and IMSA in 2027. Cyril Abiteboul will lead the team, with André Lotterer and Luis ‘Pipo’ Derani handling development and racing responsibilities. The newly formed team also revealed the GMR-001 Hypercar, Which will compete in the top-level LMDh (Le Mans Daytona h) category. As with any other pair, high-end carmakers and racing go together. It’s said, “Win on Sunday, sell on Monday.” Wheel-to-wheel racing is a very tough sport that Mercedes, McLaren, Alfa Romeo, Audi, Porsche, and Ferrari have all tried their hand at. Because of years of success and heartbreak, both teams have very loyal fans who are happy to drive their cars every day and can’t wait for the weekend. Genesis, the high-end part of Hyundai, is now trying to achieve the same success. Genesis announced the creation of a new racing team called Genesis Team Magma in Dubai on December 4. This was just a few days before the last race of the Formula One season this weekend. Both the World Endurance Championship (WEC) and the International Motor Sports Association (IMSA) will have two hypercars that the team plans to race. The WEC team will start in 2026, and the IMSA team will follow a year later. Motorsport fans will know a lot of the names on the new team. Genesis says that Cyril Abiteboul, who is currently the head of Hyundai Motorsport and has led the Caterham and Renault Formula 1 teams in the past, will be the team principal. After winning the WEC with Porsche in 2024, André Lotterer will work with Luis Felipe “Pipo” Derani, who is also very smart, to build Magma’s Hypercar in 2025. Then, when Magma starts the WEC season in 2026, they will fight each other. We don’t know anything about the team’s IMSA squad. Magma Racing and IDEC Sport are working together to put together an LMP2 team for the 2025 European Le Mans season. At the same time, the Hypercar team is being put together. North American fans will probably know Logan Sargeant, an American driver who competed in Formula 1 as recently as this season. She won her first race in the Indianapolis NXT season earlier this year. They will help Genesis Magma Racing get ready for the full pressure of endurance racing when the 2026 season starts, along with 19-year-old Frenchman Mathys Jaubert. Genesis showed off its new GMR-001 Hypercar and the people who will be racing it in the top LMDh class for both IMSA and WEC. Aside from the rules that all LMH and LMDh cars must follow, there are no mechanical details about the GMR-001 at this time. The team will have to decide how to make that much power, but we know it will be around 670 horsepower. Genesis can choose to use six or eight cylinders, or they can go the LMH route and not use a hybrid engine at all. At the very least, when the GMR-001 was introduced in Dubai, pictures and a half-scale model were shown to us. It sticks out among hypercars. The front of the car has the instantly recognizable parallel headlights from Genesis’s road cars. They are placed on either side of the vehicle’s centrally located wings. To make the race car look sleek, the headlights are placed on top of the front fenders. The car’s deck has many cuts that are meant to help with cooling and airflow. Genesis says the side aspect of the car is like the other models the company makes: it has a parabolic shape. Genesis is very involved in racing, so it could be clearer if a win on Sunday will lead to sales on Monday.
