Genesis Reveals First Race Car Livery Ahead of 2026 WEC Debut
Scheduled to enter two cars in the World Endurance Championship next year, Genesis finally drew back the curtain on its first full-scale GMR-001 Hypercar.By Jack FitzgeraldPublished: Apr 16, 2025
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Genesis
- Genesis Magma Racing revealed the livery for its first Hypercar challenger, the GMR-001 Hypercar.
- The livery is finished in Genesis’s Magma orange and gradually blends into a deeper red at the back of the car.
- The GMR-001 is scheduled to debut in the World Endurance Championship in 2026 before entering the IMSA SportsCar Championship in 2027.
The Genesis Magma train keeps on rolling. After a surprise announcement in September that Genesis was launching a hypercar effort, the Genesis Magma Racing (GMR) team officially launched in Dubai in December. Now, not content to wait until the run-up to the 2026 season, Genesis has revealed the livery for its first race car.
In a spurt of creative genius, GMR named its first challenger the GMR-001. Unsurprisingly, for anyone familiar with the brand, the GMR-001’s livery is finished in Magma orange—drawing parallels to the Magma performance cars Genesis is preparing to launch in a similar timeframe to the racing team. The team’s name can be seen written in the Korean Hangeul lettering for “Magma” repeatedly around the car.
Genesis
As with the other LMDH cars using an Oreca chassis, the GMR-001 features a low-slung front end that juts out with a front wing over the front crash structure. As with all of the brand’s road cars, the GMR-001 has Genesis’s “Two-Lines” headlight and taillight signature that wraps around the front and rear of the car. A newly engineered turbocharged V-8 engine based on the turbocharged four-cylinder engine in Hyundai’s World Rally Championship car is hiding under the bodywork. Final specifications remain a secret, but LMDh rules dictate that the car will produce around 670 horsepower at its peak when combined with a spec hybrid system.
Genesis
Genesis
The WEC program will be shepherded by drivers André Lotterer and Pipo Derani, who collectively bring more than two decades of SportsCar expertise to the fledgling team. The lineup of IMSA drivers will be announced closer to the launch of that program.
Genesis describes its entry into motorsports as a natural extension of its performance vision—the gamble will be to see how it fares against its competitors, both from a financial aspect and from a prestige standpoint. By entering WEC, Genesis is setting itself up to compete against the likes of Alpine, Aston Martin, BMW, Cadillac, Ferrari, Peugeot, Porsche, and Toyota, with Ford and McLaren set to join the competition in the future as well. In the IMSA championship, the brand will compete against Acura, Aston Martin, BMW, Cadillac, and Lamborghini. Solid performances in both series could work wonders for the young luxury brand, though a disappointing campaign in either could have the opposite effect.
