Genesis Ends Its Rookie WEC Season on a Track It Has Never Raced

Genesis Magma Racing will close its first FIA World Endurance Championship season at the 6 Hours of Monza in Italy from November 6 to 8. The circuit is new to the team, and its No. 19 GMR-001 Hypercar goes into the finale still looking for its first points of the year.

The team has spent the season learning, and its results show it. The best finish so far came at Lone Star Le Mans at the Circuit of the Americas in Texas in September, where the No. 17 car of Pipo Derani, Mathys Jaubert and André Lotterer finished seventh. At the inaugural 6 Hours of Barcelona in October, the No. 19 crew of Dani Juncadella, Paul-Loup Chatin and Mathieu Jaminet finished 11th, just outside the points.

Genesis laid out its approach to the finale in an October 30 preview on its global newsroom, calling it a back-to-basics weekend in which free practice will be used mainly to collect data and build a reliable baseline setup before the engineers look for more speed. Lotterer and Derani are the only drivers on the team with Hypercar experience at Monza, and Chatin raced there in LMP2 in 2022. "We are aiming to complete a clean race. That’s the first target," said Gabriele Tarquini, the team’s sporting director.

The 5.79-kilometer circuit is back on the WEC calendar for the first time since 2023, and its long, fast straights and heavy braking into the Variante del Rettifilo and Variante della Roggia chicanes force a compromise between straight-line speed and stability under braking. The weather is the other variable. Tire warmers are banned in the series, and Genesis expects cold track and air temperatures in November to make it hard to bring tires up to temperature, which could matter in qualifying and in the first laps of every stint. "What we’re focused on is simple: extracting what we know is in this car," said Justin Taylor, the team’s chief engineer.

Monza was not on the original schedule. The FIA confirmed in July that Barcelona and Monza would replace the final two rounds planned for Qatar and Bahrain, which were cancelled because the security situation in the region disrupted freight and travel. Lotterer said the team wants "to turn that work into a strong result and finish the season on a positive note," while Jaminet said the goal for his car is "to finally score points with the #19 GMR-001 Hypercar."

The finale is also the start of the next season in all but name. Genesis has already confirmed that the same six drivers will return for 2027, the team’s second year in the series. The racing program carries the same Magma name as the brand’s first performance road car, the GV60 Magma, which starts at $69,950 before destination and is on sale at select Genesis retailers in California, New York and New Jersey.

The HyundaiHQ Take

A seventh place as the season high is a modest return for a manufacturer that walked into the Hypercar class against established factory teams, but nobody serious expected a new team to win in year one of the hardest sports car series in the world. What matters at Monza is whether both cars finish cleanly and score, because a rookie team that ends its season in the points carries real momentum into 2027 with an unchanged lineup. For American buyers, the payoff is indirect but real: Genesis is using endurance racing to give the Magma badge on a $69,950 GV60 some substance, and points at Monza would do more for that than any ad campaign.