Genesis Magma Racing ready for FIA WEC debut after building team from scratch

When Genesis Magma Racing was announced in Dubai in December 2024, it marked the first public steps in a huge task. With only 499 days between the announcement and the first race of the 2026 FIA World Endurance Championship (WEC), it was not just a car and an engine which needed to be built but a whole team.

“No alternative” to entering WEC as full manufacturer team

The scale of the challenge was made even greater by the decision that Genesis would enter the WEC paddock as an in-house manufacturer team, rather than partner with an existing outfit. “Given the long-term objectives, there was absolutely no alternative,” explained Genesis Magma Racing Team Principal Cyril Abiteboul. “It was mandatory for us to do everything ourselves, instead of giving responsibility to a partner team, which would have been the easier thing to do.”

He continued: “This is the start of a long-term project for Genesis Magma Racing and we wanted to start with our own soul, skill and people. Genesis also wants to understand motorsport as a manufacturer and bring that high-performance culture to the company. The only way to do this is to remove the firewall between the race team and the brand and take full control ourselves.” 

What has been built is a team of 75 people, representing 16 different nationalities. They are split between Genesis Magma Racing’s race base at Le Castellet in France, Hyundai Motorsport’s Headquarters in Offenbach, Germany, and the company’s nearby Technical Centre in Fechenheim, where the Genesis G8MR 3.2l Turbo V8 at the heart of the GMR-001 Hypercar is built. For the eight rounds of the 2026 FIA World Endurance Championship, starting with next month’s 6 Hours of Imola, they will join together in the paddock for Genesis Magma Racing’s debut season.

Team assembled from scratch without compromise

Within the team are specialists with a range of backgrounds representing not only endurance racing but across the motorsport spectrum, including 15 team members from Hyundai Motorsport, who moved to Genesis Magma Racing as part of the Trajectory Programme. The team assembled bring a range of experiences and approaches to an organisation started from a blank sheet of paper.

Genesis Magma Racing Team Manager Anouck Abadie said: “Starting from a white page does have advantages. We could do what we thought was best for the team’s structure, without having to follow anything that had gone before. We were only focused on what we thought would work best. For the people too, we had everyone starting new, so we could put the right people in the right roles without any compromises or politics.” 

The team structure was tested alongside the GMR-001 Hypercar through the second half of 2025. This culminated in the December test at Barcelona where 80% of the on-event team were present, validating Genesis Magma Racing’s operational plans for the 2026 season.

Setting up an entirely new facility, Genesis Magma Racing was also able to avoid compromise on the location for the race base. Specifically choosing a location close to both chassis partner ORECA and Circuit Paul Ricard, where the GMR-001 Hypercar completed its first tests, the team is run from a 2,900 square metre workshop where the race cars will be prepared between races.

Genesis Magma Racing Operations Director Sebastien Metz said: “At the Genesis Magma Racing race base we have all the key departments and requirements of the team in one place. We have a dedicated area for the mechanics’ pitstop practice, and a space for remote engineering operations during each race weekend. It was important for us to have as much capability as we could within the team and workshop, and we have a perfect opportunity to do that.”

Team clothing design features ‘Distinctly Korean’ hallmarks 

Genesis Magma Racing team members will be instantly recognisable in the paddock, sporting team clothing featuring the signature combination of black and Magma orange. Supplied by the team’s Official Team Apparel Partner, Kappa, the kit features the now-familiar geometric Genesis Magma Racing logo, with traditional Korean Hangeul writing that inspires it included as a subtle tone-on-tone repeating design as the team remains true to its ‘distinctly Korean’ philosophy.

The combination of colours holds strong meaning – the black representing the humble attitude and the brighter shade symbolic of the self-confidence and passion of Korean culture – as the team prepares to be the first manufacturer in the championship from the country.