WEC Season Preview: Genesis

Credit: Hyundai Motorsport

Genesis Magma Racing are set to make their debut in the 2026 FIA World Endurance Championship (WEC), with the highly anticipated GMR-001. Six talented drivers will take to the track in Imola for the first race, allowing a project years in the making to finally come to life.

In late 2024, Hyundai announced they would enter the WEC with their luxury car brand, Genesis, partnering with Oreca as a chassis partner.

Since then, the team have worked tremendously hard to complete an extensive testing programme and to ensure their drivers are up to speed, to give them the very best preparations before they make their race debut. 

It will no doubt be a tough start for the team, as was seen with the Aston Martin THOR team last season. However, the team, led by former Formula One team principal Cyril Abiteboul, has significant ambitions and will hope to make sizeable progress across the 2026 season. 

Preparations began very early for this program, as the team started to work on early car design and development, the Genesis Trajectory Programme was born to provide a talent pipeline for the teams’ first driver selection process. The inaugural members were Daniel Juncadella, Mathys Jaubert and Jamie Chadwick. Partnering with IDEC Sport in the European Le Mans Series (ELMS), the trio impressed, finishing third in the LMP2 standings.

The team conducted several tests to ensure the GMR-001 was properly put through its paces before its first race. Tests were conducted at several tracks, including Magny Cours, Aragon and Qatar, with a final preseason test at Imola before the season opener.

Credit: Hyundai Motorsport

An impressive driver line up

Genesis made sure to show their intent and ambitions by pursuing the very best possible drivers to join the team ahead of the 2026 season. 

The No.17 car is composed of Pipo Derani, Jaubert and André Lotterer. Lotterer and Derani were early signings for the team, bringing a wealth of experience, containing multiple IMSA and WEC titles between them. Jaubert is an exciting youngster, with the team showing their commitment to their trajectory programme by placing him in the No.17 car.

The sister No.19 car will contain Paul-Loup Chatin, Juncadella and Mathieu Jaminet. Juncadella has an impressive GT resume as well as his exploits in ELMS in 2025, whereas Chatin and Jaminet are former Alpine and Porsche factory drivers respectively.

Chadwick will serve as the teams’ reserve driver for 2026, once again returning to the Trajectory Programme in ELMS, partnered with Laurents Hörr and Valerio Rinicella aboard the No.18 IDEC Sport LMP2. Chatin will also appear in the teams’ other car. Two new additions have joined the programme in 2026, in the form of Korean drivers Michael Shin and Kyuho Lee, both competing in single seaters.

Credit: Hyundai Motorsport

2026: a year of learning 

With the continuation of an eight round calendar for WEC in 2026, the team will have plenty of learning to do throughout the year if they hope to rise to the current level of performance needed to run at the front of the Hypercar category. 

Despite this, the team is confident in their ability to perform this season. “We have focused on the things we can control,” said Genesis Magma Racing Sporting Director Gabriele Tarquini. “In engineering, that’s the reliability and performance of the car, in team management, it’s the processes and for me, it’s the driver line-ups.”

Lotterer emphasised the success of the cars’ development, "The car is a joy to drive. Compared to the Porsche, it feels very different, more precise, more linear, and it gives you a bit more confidence. It feels like a 'purer' driving experience," he said, as he prepares to return to the WEC after leaving Porsche at the end of 2024.

Teammate Derani added, “Our first goal for the season has to be for us to become a proper team. There are so many great people in the team. What we’ve already done is a massive achievement, like climbing Mount Everest, only higher, and now we get to live what one-and-a-half-years ago was a dream.

“Now we have to polish everything – have the pitstops done right, people knowing exactly what they need to do. The reality is we need to create small targets for ourselves. For the first race we can hopefully make as few mistakes as possible and finish the race, the second race finish a little better results-wise and slowly push the targets further and further towards the front. 

“The mentality I’m taking into the season is to tick those boxes bit by bit. I think if we do that, we will eventually be surprised with where we can get,” he said, highlighting the teams’ progress, but the vast amount of work that is still to be done.

It’s clear Genesis and Hyundai are investing heavily in this programme and aren’t coming to just make up the numbers. With future ambitions to add an additional programme in IMSA, it’s certainly an exciting time ahead for the brand. How do you think they will perform in their debut season?