André Lotterer has professed himself pleased with progress after Genesis Magma Racing recently wrapped up an intensive 2025 testing and preparation programme ahead of its FIA World Endurance Championship debut in the headlining Hypercar category next season.
The Hyundai premium marque’s FIA WEC effort was officially launched just over a year ago, with the GMR-001’s 3.2-litre turbocharged V8 engine first fired up in February, sparking a series of dyno tests to achieve efficiency, power and reliability objectives. At the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya last week, the unit in the #17 car successfully surpassed 8,000km of running – a significant development milestone.
“It’s a massive deal for us to reach our reliability target,” acknowledged Genesis Magma Racing Chief Engineer, Justin Taylor. “If you go into the season knowing you can’t complete the longest, most important race, then it would be hard to stay motivated. The power unit guys had the biggest task of anybody with this project, so this speaks to the job they’ve done.”
Alongside the tireless work on-track, a team of personnel has simultaneously been built from the ground up, bringing together technicians and engineers from elsewhere in endurance racing and staff from Hyundai Motorsport who formed part of Genesis’ ‘Trajectory Programme’, embedded within the IDEC Sport LMP2 outfit in the European Le Mans Series in 2025.
The two-car Barcelona test offered the opportunity to gather essential data while assessing operational processes around a circuit that has characteristics in common with several others on the FIA WEC calendar, supported by full crews of mechanics and engineers.
“It’s like a rehearsal before you go on stage,” explained Team Manager, Anouck Abadie. “We needed to know that everybody works well together, because when you pick people up from different teams and environments, you don’t expect them to know each other at the first race.
“It was really important for us, before closing 2025, to do at least one test with almost a full team. We had 75 people there – about 80 per cent of the team – so now we can see if we need to make some adjustments. Overall, I’m very satisfied and optimistic when I see the team working together.”
In addition to validating vital reliability areas and fine-tuning performance, the three days allowed the squad’s freshly-finalised 2026 FIA WEC driver line-up to get used to working together.
“We’ve come a long way since the first test, especially on reliability,” asserted two-time world champion Lotterer, who will partner ‘Pipo’ Derani and Mathys Jaubert in the #17 entry following a season’s absence from the grid. The trio’s GMR-001 Hypercar sported a new ‘liquid metal’ livery in Catalunya, overlaid with the Korean Hangeul lettering for ‘Magma’, which inspired the geometric Genesis Magma Racing logo on the engine cover.
“We were in Barcelona with two cars focused on performance and in particular software optimisation. We came with a new aero package and also got to try the new tyres on one car. We maximised our time and collected a lot of data, so we leave smarter than when we arrived.”
“I think we go into the Christmas break in positive spirits, because we know we can now start working on other things and have a little bit less to worry about,” added Taylor. “Certainly, there are a lot of people who have a lot of work left to do next year, but I’m feeling confident.”
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