Logan Sargeant is being “given a platform” to progress to Genesis’s new-for-2026 World Endurance Championship squad together with his LMP2 programme in subsequent 12 months’s European Le Mans Collection.
Cyril Abiteboul, staff principal of Genesis Magma Racing, defined that the thought of the so-called trajectory programme within the ELMS that former Williams Formulation 1 driver Sargeant has joined together with Jamie Chadwick and Mathys Jaubert is a necessary a part of its preparations for the Hyundai model’s WEC entry in 2026.
“Trajectory is a programme to offer an opportunity to engineers, mechanics, technicians to stay their dream of motorsport with us,” stated Abiteboul, who can be president of the Hyundai Motorsport organisation masterminding Genesis’s transfer into top-line sportscar racing with a brand new LMDh prototype.
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“We [also] need to give a chance to drivers to be a part of what we’re within the technique of constructing.
“You will notice some drivers in Genesis colors, in addition to some engineers, technicians, mechanics: they are going to be studying what endurance means, to allow them to convey that experience into our future WEC staff.
“There will probably be a really sturdy connection between these drivers and ourselves, so possibly there’s a future between them and ourselves for 2026 onwards.”
Cyril Abiteboul, Group principal Hyundai World Rally Group
Photograph by: Austral / Hyundai Motorsport
Abiteboul has pressured that there aren’t any targets laid down for the three drivers that can assure their commencement to the manufacturing unit Genesis WEC staff, which has introduced Andre Lotterer and Pipo Derani as its first signings.
“We need to hold it a bit free with none type of mechanism,” Abiteboul advised Motorsport.com. “We’re giving them the chance, the platform after which we are going to see what occurs.”
The trajectory programme will probably be undertaken along side the IDEC Sport staff, which took third place in P2 at this 12 months’s Le Mans 24 Hours.
Abiteboul defined that the selection of drivers for the trajectory entry – certainly one of two P2 ORECA-Gibson 07s IDEC will subject within the ELMS subsequent 12 months – had been made along side the staff.
He said they’d determined to offer a chance to Sargeant, who was changed at Williams after August’s Dutch Grand Prix by Franco Colapinto, as a result of he “deserves to be given an opportunity to kind of reset on the hardships he was going through in F1”.
IDEC sporting director Nicolas Minassian, the previous Peugeot LMP1 driver, revealed that he was impressed by Sargeant when he was given a try-out at Paul Ricard on the wheel of one of many staff’s ORECAs final month.
“Logan was very open and excited to drive a racing automobile once more after a foul patch,” he stated.
“I favored his humbleness: he’s very humble, passionate and motivated – we put him within the automobile and he was very sturdy.”
Sargeant wasn’t new to LMP2 or sportscar racing: he undertook two ELMS races within the TF Sport-run Group Turkey ORECA in 2021, the identical 12 months that he contested three rounds of the Michelin-sponsored Le Mans Cup ELMS assist sequence driving an Iron Lynx Ferrari 488 GT3 Evo.
Abiteboul has defined that the Genesis staff will function independently when it begins racing a automobile to be often known as the GMR-001 Hypercar within the WEC.
Genesis LMDh
Photograph by: Genesis
“The tip recreation is to have the autonomy that we need to have for a lot of causes, however we want the assistance and assist of some individuals in an effort to make that occur,” he stated. “That’s the objective of the partnership with IDEC – to do precisely that.”
The GMR staff will probably be assembled by the Frankfurt-based Hyundai Motorsport operation, which runs the South Korean producer’s World Rally Championship programme, and can have workshops at Paul Ricard.
It will likely be positioned in a brand new enterprise park constructed by Groupe IDEC Worldwide, the guardian firm of the French race staff, adjoining to the French observe’s well-known Mistral Straight.
French constructor ORECA, on whose chassis backbone the GMR-001 will probably be primarily based, can be positioned close to Paul RIcard in Signes.
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On this article
Gary Watkins
European Le Mans
WEC
Logan Sargeant
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