Paul-Loup Chatin is excited to see the ‘benefit of what we do on-track in the wider market’ when Genesis joins the grid in the FIA World Endurance Championship this year, after the #19 Hypercar that the Frenchman will share with countryman Mathieu Jaminet and Daniel Juncadella was presented in a striking stealth-like livery.
The 6 Hours of Imola in just over two weeks’ time (17-19 April) will be a momentous occasion for the South Korean carmaker – the luxury division of automotive giant, Hyundai – in heralding the beginning of the marque’s maiden motorsport programme.
Running under the Genesis Magma Racing banner, the #17 GMR-001 – to be crewed by two-time world champion André Lotterer, multiple IMSA title-winner ‘Pipo’ Derani and FIA WEC newcomer, Mathys Jaubert – was unveiled earlier this week, sporting a bold ‘Liquid Metal’ design, but the sister #19 entry will embrace a different look.
“While working on options and solutions for the final livery, we landed with two strong candidates during our last test of 2025,” explained Hyundai Motor Group President and Chief Creative Officer, Luc Donckerwolke. “One black car with Liquid Metal Hangeul lettering, and one Liquid Metal car with black graphics.
“This inverted solution instantly gave us a difficult decision to make, but we looked at the feedback online and quickly realised that by choosing just one livery, we would have disappointed a good portion of our fans.”
Chatin has been part of the project since November, having spent the past two campaigns competing for Alpine in FIA WEC’s top-tier – forming part of the French manufacturer’s race-winning trio at Fuji last autumn. The ex-European Le Mans Series and IMSA LMP2 class champion is hopeful of taking consistent steps forward from one round to the next in 2026.
“I’m really looking forward to building the reputation of the Genesis brand,” enthused the 34-year-old Frenchman. “That’s one of the goals for Genesis Magma Racing, and if we are good on-track then that will be good for the brand. It will be super-cool to see the benefit of what we do on-track in the wider market.
“At the moment, we don’t know where we are exactly in terms of performance compared to the other teams. It would not be realistic to say we’ll be fast and reliable straightaway, but we want to progress during the season. What I don’t want to see is a decent first race and a decent last race – I’d prefer to have a difficult race at Imola and then a good Bahrain weekend at the end of the year.”
Those sentiments are echoed by stablemates Jaminet and Juncadella. The former – a long-time Porsche factory driver prior to joining Genesis – has twice been crowned in IMSA competition in the United States, while the latter steps up to Hypercar level from FIA WEC’s LMGT3 category, in which he was a race-winner with TF Sport last year.
“The GMR-001 is very different from the Porsche I’ve driven before,” commented Jaminet. “There are definitely some strengths – even if we are still very early in the programme – while there are also some weaker points, which is where I try to bring my development experience to the engineers, in our efforts to create a winning race car.
“I think a realistic target is progression – that the car gets reliable over the year, that we start to gain performance and slowly catch up to the front and that we really see progress from race one to race number eight.”
“There are many different things that play into a result that we cannot control,” added Spain’s Juncadella, whose career has additionally comprised single-seater success in FIA Formula 3 and the Macau Grand Prix. “We need to focus on what we can control, which is why we’ve worked during testing on being better every day on the aspects that gain you performance – whether that is reliability, driveability or lap time.
“It could be, at the end of the season, we look back and even if we haven’t scored a good result, we can say, ‘ok, here we had a chance but something happened’. If you give yourself opportunities to score big results, that’s already something you can be proud of. If we’re in a position to fight for a strong result in our first year, I think we can be satisfied.”
Following the curtain-raising contest in Italy later this month, the hunt for honours will continue with outings at Spa-Francorchamps (9 May), Le Mans (13-14 June), Interlagos (12 July), COTA (6 September) and Fuji (27 September), subsequently concluding with the rescheduled Qatar 1812km on 24 October and the traditional season finale in Bahrain on 7 November.
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