Genesis Goes Racing: The Koreans Are Coming for Le Mans If anyone from Genesis is reading this - yes, I would very much like to have a go in your race car. I promise to bring it back in roughly the same number of pieces it started in. It is the most ambitious Korean plan since someone decided to make Squid Game. You see, Genesis has announced they're going to Le Mans. Yes, that Le Mans. The one where Ferrari, Porsche, and every other manufacturer with a racing pedigree longer than the Bible has been competing for nearly a century. You see, Genesis - a company that didn't even exist when some of their competitors were already winning at La Sarthe - has decided that making excellent luxury cars isn't enough. They want to take on the world's best at the world's most grueling race. It's like watching your younger cousin decide to take up boxing and immediately challenge Mike Tyson. But here's the thing: they're not mucking about. The new GMR-001 Hypercar looks like something Batman would reject for being too dramatic. It's got all the proper bits - those signature Genesis double-line headlights that make it look perpetually angry, enough aerodynamic appendages to make an F1 car blush, and a rear wing that could probably double as a picnic table for a small family. They've even nabbed some proper talent to run the show. Cyril Abiteboul, the man who used to run Renault's F1 team and probably still has nightmares about Daniel Ricciardo, is heading up the whole operation. And for drivers, they've got André Lotterer, who's won Le Mans three times with Audi (back when Audi used to win everything), and Pipo Derani, who knows his way around Daytona and Sebring better than most people know their way around their own kitchen. The car itself will play by the LMDh rules, which means it's limited to 671 horsepower - though 67 of those horses are electric, because it's 2024 and everything needs to have at least a bit of spark about it. It'll weigh just 1,030 kilograms, which is about the same as a Lotus Elise that's been on a particularly strict diet. They're setting up shop at Circuit Paul Ricard in France, which is a bit like opening a pizza restaurant in Naples - brave, but it shows you mean business. Before they jump into the deep end with the WEC in 2026, they're doing a sort of trial run in LMP2 with IDEC Sport in 2025. It's like practicing for a marathon by doing a few 10k runs first, except in this case the marathon involves racing for 24 hours straight. The really amusing bit? This all started with some Vision GT concepts - you know, those digital cars that exist only in PlayStation games. Genesis has basically gone from making pretend race cars to building real ones, which is a bit like deciding to become a chef because you're good at Cooking Mama. And on that bombshell, I'm left wondering what's next for Genesis. They've gone from "who are they?" to "bloody hell, they're good" in about the same time it takes most car companies to design a new cup holder. At this rate, by 2030 they'll probably have colonized Mars and started an interplanetary racing series.
