Team principal of Genesis Magma Racing, Cyril Abiteboul, ruled out Genesis debut in the IMSA Sportscar Championship in 2027. Speaking to media, including Motorsport Week, Abiteboul explained that a debut for next season would be “too early” for the team.
The Genesis Magma Racing Hypercar, GMR-001, made its race debut in Imola two months ago at the first round of the World Endurance Championship. In just their second race at Spa-Francorchamps, the #17 Genesis scored points when finishing 8th at the 6-hour mark.
Heading into the 24H of Le Mans, Abiteboul explained that there is still a lot of work: “You need to develop everything from a clean sheet of paper. So as a new team, that’s right now where we are struggling a little bit. So it’s not about data, it’s simply about the time to develop, and also the time that you need to spend on track.”
With the South Korean LMDh not having completed a longer race than 6 hours just yet, Le Mans poses a lot of questions in terms of reliability: “Frankly, I wanted to go into this race here in Le Mans to sort of be able to assess where we were and maybe answer more accurately to your question how we do against our plan.
“And from that, we will be able to judge what we should be doing next. Having said that, we also need to look at IMSA.”
IMSA is the plan, but not just yet
Genesis spoke about joining the IMSA grid in the past, with the expected debut season being in 2027. The plan has now changed, according to Abiteboul: “We need to look at the dynamic of the championship. Of course, the news of Acura stopping is not good news for us.
“We’d like to understand and to see what the dynamic of the championship is, what the promoter’s position is on that.
“Because at the end of the day, it’s all about return on investment. The US is a big market, an important market. We will be doing huge activation in Lone Star, in Austin, later this year.”
Building a brand identity is one of the most important things for Genesis: “I think this will be an interesting moment for us to decide on an expansion in IMSA, to see the response of the US market, the engagement with the fan, but also of the local market, Genesis, which is obviously, US is an important market for Genesis.
“So I think around that time, we will make the decision of the timing of entry in IMSA.
“We are now talking about joining in 2028,” said Cyril Abiteboul.
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