Sargeant deserves chance to start over with Genesis WEC project

Logan Sargeant is being “given a platform” to progress to Genesis’s new-for-2026 World Endurance Championship squad with his LMP2 programme in next year’s European Le Mans Series.

Cyril Abiteboul, team principal of Genesis Magma Racing, explained that the idea of the so-called trajectory programme in the ELMS that former Williams Formula 1 driver Sargeant has joined along with Jamie Chadwick and Mathys Jaubert is an essential part of its preparations for the Hyundai brand’s WEC entry in 2026.

“Trajectory is a programme to give a chance to engineers, mechanics, technicians to live their dream of motorsport with us,” said Abiteboul, who is also president of the Hyundai Motorsport organisation masterminding Genesis’s move into top-line sportscar racing with a new LMDh prototype.

“We [also] want to give an opportunity to drivers to be part of what we are in the process of building.

“You will see some drivers in Genesis colours, as well as some engineers, technicians, mechanics: they will be learning what endurance means, so they can bring that expertise into our future WEC team.

“There will be a very strong connection between those drivers and ourselves, so maybe there is a future between them and ourselves for 2026 onwards.”

Cyril Abiteboul, Team principal Hyundai World Rally Team

Photo by: Austral / Hyundai Motorsport

Abiteboul has stressed that there are no targets laid down for the three drivers that will guarantee their graduation to the factory Genesis WEC team, which has announced Andre Lotterer and Pipo Derani as its first signings.

“We want to keep it a bit loose without any kind of mechanism,” Abiteboul told Motorsport.com. “We are giving them the opportunity, the platform and then we will see what happens.”

The trajectory programme will be undertaken in conjunction with the IDEC Sport team, which took third place in P2 at this year’s Le Mans 24 Hours.

Abiteboul explained that the choice of drivers for the trajectory entry – one of two P2 ORECA-Gibson 07s IDEC will field in the ELMS next year – had been made in conjunction with the team.

He stated they had decided to give an opportunity to Sargeant, who was replaced at Williams after August’s Dutch Grand Prix by Franco Colapinto, because he “deserves to be given a chance to sort of reset on the hardships he was facing in F1”.

IDEC sporting director Nicolas Minassian, the former Peugeot LMP1 driver, revealed that he was impressed by Sargeant when he was given a try-out at Paul Ricard at the wheel of one of the team’s ORECAs last month.

“Logan was very open and excited to drive a racing car again after a bad patch,” he said.

“I liked his humbleness: he is very humble, passionate and motivated – we put him in the car and he was very strong.”

Sargeant wasn’t new to LMP2 or sportscar racing: he undertook two ELMS races in the TF Sport-run Team Turkey ORECA in 2021, the same year that he contested three rounds of the Michelin-sponsored Le Mans Cup ELMS support series driving an Iron Lynx Ferrari 488 GT3 Evo.

Abiteboul has explained that the Genesis team will operate independently when it starts racing a car to be known as the GMR-001 Hypercar in the WEC.

Genesis LMDh

Photo by: Genesis

“The end game is to have the autonomy that we want to have for many reasons, but we need the help and support of some people in order to make that happen,” he said. “That is the purpose of the partnership with IDEC – to do exactly that.”

The GMR team will be assembled by the Frankfurt-based Hyundai Motorsport operation, which runs the South Korean manufacturer’s World Rally Championship programme, and will have workshops at Paul Ricard.

It will be located in a new business park built by Groupe IDEC International, the parent company of the French race team, adjacent to the French track’s famous Mistral Straight.

French constructor ORECA, on whose chassis spine the GMR-001 will be based, is also located near Paul RIcard in Signes.