Genesis Magma Racing Targets Strong WEC 2026 Debut
For its debut season in the FIA World Endurance Championship, Genesis Magma Racing has built a driver lineup that blends title-winning experience, development know-how and youthful ambition. Even so, everyone in the team understands the size of the task ahead.
Genesis Magma Racing feels encouraged by its testing and development work, but the team knows that only the first competitive sessions of the 2026 WEC season will show its true progress. Genesis has earned a place on the grid for the 6 Hours of Imola through its work as a manufacturer and through the team’s preparation. On track, though, Genesis Magma Racing must earn the right to compete with the established teams and manufacturers it wants to challenge.
“We have focused on the things we can control,” said Genesis Magma Racing Sporting Director Gabriele Tarquini. “In engineering, that’s the reliability and performance of the car, in team management, it’s the processes, and for me, it’s the driver lineups.”
He explained: “Each of our drivers brings something different, and that’s exactly what makes a strong endurance lineup. We have drivers whose extensive Hypercar experience has been extremely valuable in developing the car, and others who, with the enthusiasm of rookies, will help us overcome the difficulties we will certainly face during our first season. But beyond individual strengths, what really matters is how they work together. Endurance racing is about trust, communication and shared responsibility for the result.”
The way the drivers worked together played a major role in shaping the three-driver crews for each GMR-001 Hypercar. When Genesis Magma Racing named André Lotterer and Pipo Derani as its first two drivers in December 2024, the team expected them to race in different cars. Early testing changed that view. The team saw how well they worked together and decided to place them together in the #17 GMR-001 Hypercar. That pairing gives Genesis Magma Racing a strong base of experience, while Hypercar rookie and Trajectory Program graduate Mathys Jaubert adds fresh energy and speed.
The team has placed Daniel Juncadella, Mathieu Jaminet and Paul-Loup Chatin in the #19 GMR-001 Hypercar. Juncadella already knows Jaubert from their European Le Mans Series campaign last year. All three drivers now begin a new chapter with Genesis Magma Racing. They also bring strong credentials. Jaminet arrives with IMSA title-winning pedigree. Juncadella brings proven GT racing success. Chatin adds a FIA WEC race win from the 2025 6 Hours of Fuji in a car that used the same ORECA spine as the GMR-001 Hypercar.
Pipo Derani was born in São Paulo, Brazil, on 12 October 1993 and holds a Platinum FIA driver grading. His career highlights include victory in the 2023 12 Hours of Sebring in the GTP class and the 2023 IMSA SportsCar Championship in GTP with one win and three podiums. He also won the 2021 IMSA SportsCar Championship in DPi with four wins and eight podiums. His record also includes major endurance wins at Sebring, Petit Le Mans, and Daytona, as well as a third-place finish in the 2015 FIA World Endurance Championship LMP2 class. Pipo Derani said, “Our first goal for the season has to be for us to become a proper team. There are so many great people in the team. What we’ve already done is a massive achievement, like climbing Mount Everest, only higher, and now we get to live what one-and-a-half years ago was a dream. Now we have to polish everything – have the pit stops done right, with people knowing exactly what they need to do. The reality is that we need to set small targets for ourselves. For the first race, we can hopefully make as few mistakes as possible and finish the race; the second race, finish a little better, results-wise, and slowly push the targets further and further towards the front. The mentality I’m taking into the season is to tick those boxes bit by bit. I think if we do that, we will eventually be surprised by where we can go.”
Mathys Jaubert was born in Salon-de-Provence, France, on 3 March 2005 and holds a Silver FIA driver grading. He arrives as one of the most exciting young talents in the Genesis Magma Racing programme. In 2025, he finished third in the European Le Mans Series LMP2 class with three wins and four podiums, and he placed eighth in the Porsche Supercup with one win and two podiums. In 2024, he took second in Porsche Carrera Cup France with three wins and nine podiums, third in Porsche Carrera Cup Asia with 11 podiums, and 10th in Porsche Supercup. Mathys Jaubert said: “For me, honestly, my first target is to make a good year, as I did in 2025 in the European Le Mans Series. If I can go without mistakes and perform well in all my stints, I will be proud of what I have done at the end of the year. This is my main target, and the most important thing for the team. I think a good aim for us is to finish in the top five in one race; this, for the team's first year, would be very strong. Personally, my ambition is to be the best rookie in the WEC. That’s always the first aim: to be the best of the group, like you. But, for that,t you need to have good teammates, a good car and a good team around you.”
André Lotterer was born in Duisburg, Germany, on 19 November 1981 and holds a Platinum FIA driver grading. He brings some of the strongest credentials in the 2026 WEC field. He won the 2024 FIA World Endurance Championship in the Hypercar class with two wins and five podiums. He also won the 24 Hours of Le Mans overall in 2011, 2012, and 2014, claimed the 2012 FIA World Endurance Championship in LMP1, and won Formula Nippon in 2011. André Lotterer said: “For most of us who have been in the sport a long time, the ultimate goal is to win,n and until then you’re not too happy. The dynamic is obviously different when you join as a new manufacturer against teams that have been racing for years. So, you have a humble approach. It would be amazing to finish our first race without any issues and accumulate maximum experience; it would be a great achievement. But as we know, and as all ambitious people in motorsport are, we are very competitive. So, for sure, we will do our best to be as competitive as possible. The car has run without problems in testing, and life has been pretty good. But in the racing scenario, it can be different. We will definitely face the things we try to simulate and expect, but they will come. And let's see how we can manage them and tackle them. And that is how we will be challenged.”
Paul-Loup Chatin was born in Dourdan, France, on 19 October 1991 and holds a Gold FIA driver grading. He adds deep prototype racing experience to the Genesis Magma Racing Hypercar project. In 2025, he finished 14th in the FIA World Endurance Championship Hypercar class and won once. He also won the 2023 IMSA SportsCar Championship in LMP2 with one win and four podiums, and he won the European Le Mans Series LMP2 title in both 2019 and 2014. Paul-Loup Chatin said, “I’m really looking forward to being part of the Genesis brand, building the reputation of the brand in Europe. That’s part of the goal for Genesis Magma Racing, and if we are good on track, then that will be good for the brand. It will be super cool to see the benefit of what we do on track in the wider market. As a race team, we want to progress during the season. What I don’t want to see is a decent first race and a decent last race. I’d actually prefer to have a difficult race in Imola and then a good weekend in Bahrain at the end of the year. I don't know where we’ll start compared to the other teams. We'll know soon, but at the moment,t I still don’t know exactly where we are in terms of performance. We dream about it, but it would not be realistic to say we’ll arrive, and we’ll be fast and reliable.”
Mathieu Jaminet was born in Hayange, France, on 24 October 1994 and holds a Platinum FIA driver grading. He joins Genesis Magma Racing with recent top-level success in IMSA. He won the 2025 IMSA SportsCar Championship in GTP with one win and six podiums after finishing second in the same category in 2024 with two wins and five podiums. He also won the 2022 IMSA SportsCar Championship in GTD Pro and the 2018 ADAC GT Masters title. Mathieu Jaminet said, “The GMR-001 Hypercar is very different from the Porsche I’ve driven before. It’s quite surprising, knowing how tight the LMDh regulations are, that two cars can feel so different, but at the end of the day, they all make more or less the same lap time, even if it’s in different ways. There are definitely some strengths in the GMR-001 Hypercar, even though we are still very early in the Genesis Magma Racing project. On the other hand, there are some weak points, and this is where I try to bring my experience to the engineers, having developed a previous car and raced it for a couple of years, to help create a winning racecar. I think a realistic target is progression - that the car gets more reliable over the year, that we start to gain performance and slowly catch up to the front and really see progression from race one to race number eight.”
Dani Juncadella was born in Barcelona, Spain, on 7 May 1991 and holds a Platinum FIA driver grading. He brings pace, versatility and experience from both GT and prototype racing. In 2025, he finished third in the European Le Mans Series LMP2 class with three wins and four podiums, and he placed sixth in the FIA World Endurance Championship LMGT3 class with one win and one podium. He also finished second in the 2023 IMSA SportsCar Championship GTD Pro class, won the 2022 GT World Challenge Europe Endurance Pro title, won the 2012 FIA Formula 3 Europe title, and took victory in the 2011 Macau Grand Prix. Dani Juncadella said: “Many different things are playing into a result that we, or at least I as a driver, cannot control. We need to focus on what we control, and that’s why we’ve worked during testing to be better every day in the areas that can improve performance, whether it is reliability, drivability, or lap time. It could be, at the end of the season, we look back and, even if we haven’t scored a good result, we could probably say, ‘OK, here we had a chance, and something happened.’ But if you give yourself opportunities to score big results, that’s already something you can be proud of. If we’re in a position to fight for a strong result already in our first year, I think that’s something we can be satisfied with.”
Genesis Magma Racing enters its first FIA World Endurance Championship season with a clear plan, a balanced WEC driver lineup and realistic expectations. The team has not promised instant success. Instead, it has focused on building a reliable GMR-001 Hypercar, developing strong race operations and creating the right mix of experience and ambition inside the garage. That approach should give Genesis Magma Racing a solid platform for its WEC debut and a chance to grow stronger with every race.
