Abiteboul “Very Satisfied” With Genesis’ Prologue Debut

Genesis Magma Racing team principal Cyril Abiteboul says he was “very satisfied” with the squad’s Prologue as it prepares for its FIA World Endurance Championship debut with its new GMR-001 Hypercar.

The pair of cars did not encounter any major problems at Imola during Tuesday’s testing and completed 356 laps between them, putting Genesis in line with the majority of the established WEC contenders.

The best lap time achieved by the newcomer was a 1:33.618 from Mathieu Jaminet, which was 2.4 seconds adrift of the ultimate pace set by Ferrari’s Antonio Fuoco, leaving the manufacturer at the bottom of the Hypercar timesheets.

However, Abiteboul says Genesis was not concentrating on single-lap pace during the eight hours of track time.

“Very good I think it’s fair to say,” Abiteboul told Sportscar365 of the manufacturer’s Prologue.

“As a new team, a new entrant, there was a lot that could’ve gone wrong in that Prologue and, frankly, we had set ourselves a number of targets in terms of mileage, in terms of procedures, in terms of system checks and we’ve been able to tick every single one of these boxes. Good lap count in total. That was good, no particular issues to report.”

Jaminet added: “It was good to run with our competitors for the first time ever. It seems pretty clear where we need to go and it was a pretty good day to start the WEC journey.

“It was very new for a lot of people and I think we should be proud of what we’ve done.”

With Genesis being a new WEC entrant, it has to run the same Balance of Performance as the pacesetter at the end of last year as there is no previous data to work with, so it is automatically on the back foot for its debut.

Abiteboul therefore says the focus is very much on reliability and completing as much mileage as possible at this weekend’s season opener.

“We were absolutely not chasing performance,” he explained of the Prologue.

“As a new entrant, it’s clear we’re not in a position to do that anyway so we were focusing instead on what is in our control and what in particular will be our target for this opening race and probably for the next one also, which is reliability and good execution from the team.”

In terms of specific targets for Imola, Abiteboul says the first goal is to get both GMR-001s to the finish at the end of the six hours on Sunday.

“Frankly, what is hopefully possible but is still a challenge is to have two cars completing the race distance and also being classified,” he said.

“Hopefully having no penalty in the sense of making no mistakes from an operational perspective.

“Then, if you ask me in terms of pace, we know pretty much already we will be at the back of the field but I would like to see if it’s possible to be not far from the field.

“Frankly, if we can be at the back of the field but in contact with that field, that would be an encouraging start.”