The Genesis GMR-001 Le Mans car's V8 will be two 4cyl WRC engines bolted together

“Motorsport is a sexy thing. People want to be part of it,” said Cyril Abiteboul, Genesis Magma team principal. So speaks a man who, in his previous incarnation as Renault F1 boss, came out of Netflix hit Drive to Survive with at least some of his dignity intact.

He’s now fronting up Genesis’ push into endurance racing. Think Genesis is over-reaching itself? Didn’t you think the same of Hyundai and Kia a few years back? 2025 will see the first Magma road car launched. Given the same team are working on this as Hyundai’s N brand, don’t chuckle too hard just yet. You might actually want a Genesis this time next year.

Speaking of which, it’s looking suspiciously like Genesis’ EV timeline is being shoved back. Asked whether they would continue to develop ICE engines and if the target was still to have six EVs on sale by 2030, CEO Mike Song replied “we don’t decide. The customer will decide”.

Magma is Genesis’ AMG. Ultimately the plan is not only to have top spec versions, but probably a Magma design line and options. Let’s see how hard they try to link that to racing. I don’t fully buy creative boss Luc Donckerwolke when he says “we will not race if we don't have products that learn from what we do in motorsport”. In the main it’s a branding and exposure exercise.

The question right now is whether the road cars might actively impede the race cars. A throw-away line on stage at the team’s launch might be more revealing than they intended, when Donckerwolke told lead driver Andre Lotterer that he didn’t need to worry about the headlights. Clearly Lotterer has already raised concerns about the ability of the twin stripe light signature to throw enough light down the road.

The following day Donckerwolke insisted “Andre will not have to worry. He will not need infrared vision”, going on to explain that rather than using the same LED lamps as the competition, “we could go with our supplier, SL, which is the supplier of the thinnest and most powerful LED matrix components”.

Of perhaps more concern to the team was Donckerwolke’s insistence that the design of the car would not necessarily be down to the aerodynamicists alone. “You could argue that BoP [Balance Of Performance which ensures close racing] will save you if the design is not aerodynamic. But I still want to be mostly aerodynamic.”

The project has come together very fast, with Donckerwolke (despite his design background, a colossal Le Mans fan) and Abiteboul the driving forces behind it. Abiteboul admits the main reason they are doing an LMP2 project next year “is to build a team. It is to cement the team, to create a dynamic”. He also talks about a 'Trajectory Program', aiming to bring through a new generation of talent – not just drivers, but engineers and designers as well – and talks about potential crossover between disciplines.

“We know motorsports is quite fragmented," he said. "You have rally people, endurance people, Formula 1 people, but they don’t talk to each other. I can see that in certain areas of the team rally people can collaborate and bring something quite unique”.

He's referring, of course, to Hyundai’s long-time WRC project which, in perhaps the most exciting news, will have a major role to play in the GMR-001's mechanical make-up. Two of the rally car’s 1.6-litre L4 T-GDI engines are being combined on a common crank to create the endurance racer’s V8. “It’s only the lower part of the engine that needs to be redesigned. It's not such a such a big deal," said Abiteboul, “the top of the engine is actually more of the moving parts and most of that can be carried over. The WRC engine is actually very good in terms of fuel efficiency, and great in terms of technology, in terms of materials.”

The new engine is due on the dyno in just two months, with a prototype car hopefully running from late spring and proper testing commencing at the end of summer. The timescales are necessarily tight due to the immovable homologation deadlines.

Finally, Jacky Ickx’s appointment as brand ambassador – a head-scratcher up to this point – appears to have some logic behind it. Donckerwolke claims his role, as a six-time Le Mans winner, will be as much to inspire the team internally as be a figurehead externally.

“Winning Le Mans is like climbing Kilimanjaro, it’s something that transforms your life. Winning Le Mans is going to transform this company. Let's face it, everybody dreams about winning Le Mans.”