After showcasing concept cars in a bright and vivid Magma Orange color, Genesis announced that Magma would be the name of its performance outfit after enjoying meteoric success in the luxury automotive market in its first decade as a brand. Along with creating production performance cars, the first of which is the GV60 Magma, Genesis also announced that Magma would be present in the racing world, specifically in the form of top-class endurance racing, with the GMR-001 racing hypercar that would take on the FIA WEC, including, of course, the 24 Hours of Le Mans.
That ambition was announced in December 2024, giving the team, which didn’t even exist yet, a mere 499 days between making that announcement and starting at the first FIA WEC race in 2026. Now, that team is together and ready to take on the championship as an in-house manufacturer outfit, and it consists of 75 people of 16 different nationalities. The team has multiple bases, one in Le Castellet, France, Hyundai Motorsport’s Offenbach, Germany headquarters, and a Technical Center in Fechenheim, Germany, where the turbocharged V8 engine that powers the Genesis GMR-001 is built.
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Its leadership includes team principal Cyril Abiteboul, team manager Anouck Abadie, chief engineer Justin Taylor, sporting director Gabriele Tarquini, and operations director Sebastien Metz. The team was built from scratch, bringing together people with various levels of experience and allowing the team to decide its own operations structure and plans. Honoring the heritage behind the Genesis brand, the team’s clothing designs feature “distinctly Korean” hallmarks.
Supplied by partner Kappa, the clothing designs feature the signature orange and black color scheme, which carries significance in Korean culture, as well as a tone-on-tone pattern created with traditional hangul writing. This past December, a test in Barcelona determined the team’s viability in its operational plans for the upcoming season, with 80 percent of its on-event members present, but the real test is coming very soon when the 2026 FIA WEC begins with the 6 Hours of Imola in April.
Image Source: Genesis North America