Derani: Genesis ‘Cracked the Code’ to Improve Drivability

Photo: Drew Gibson/Genesis

Genesis Magma Racing driver Pipo Derani believes the fledgling FIA World Endurance Championship team has ‘cracked the code’ to improve the drivability of its new GMR-001 LMDh challenger.

Two-time IMSA top-class champion Derani has been with Genesis since the start of its Hypercar journey and conducted initial testing of the ORECA-chassied prototype alongside Andre Lotterer.

Since the first shakedown in August, he says the car has improved significantly and developing the software and systems has been a key area of focus ahead of Genesis’ WEC debut in Qatar in March.

“A lot because obviously, as a manufacturer, we come into a ruleset that requires a torque sensor and trying to understand how to implement the torque sensor and to make our engine and systems work around it takes time,” Derani explained when Sportscar365 asked about how the GMR-001 had improved so far during a Genesis event at Barcelona last month.

“It’s quite complex for the engineers who haven’t done this before, so the first phase of development was you implement some software, does it work, does it not work, does it turn on, does it not turn on? Pretty much to make it simple it’s a bit like that.

“Then you go into a second phase of the first half of development, which is does it turn on? Yes, but what other areas by having this on does it affect?

“And then you go deeper and say, now this has been fixed, but we created all sorts of issues in other areas, so how do you clean all those issues that were created by trying to fix another issue?

“At the end of the day, you start adding patches and patches to try and fix issues. At some point you realise the big patch, this is what’s going to fix everything. And, once you find that, you make a big step forward.

“That’s exactly what happened to us. We then had a clear understanding of how we should operate the engine within the torque sensor and the regulations, which is the most difficult part of the regulations in my opinion is being able to have a very polished system.

“I think to a certain degree at times it felt like we were going to crack the code a bit quicker and at times it felt like we were never going to crack the code and we were scratching our heads, but it’s fair to say it’s part of the development.

“It’s part of a new manufacturer coming into a new sport, a new engine being built from scratch, so I think we’ve come out from the other side in a good way so far.”

Despite Derani noting the real progress that has been made, he is aware of the size of the challenge the Korean manufacturer faces this season when it competes against manufacturers with several years of Hypercar experience already under their belts.

With Genesis testing in Qatar this month ahead of the Prologue at the same circuit in March, he feels the real barometer of the car’s performance will come at the second round at Imola, with the track’s curbs posing a greater challenge.

“Obviously, you don’t want to be super excited because we know we’ve got to be humble with your foot on the ground – we’re going into a very deep competition with people who have been doing it for many years,” said Derani about his expectations.

“We understand the depth of difficulty we’re going to face but, considering how we’ve put everything together from scratch – we didn’t have a chassis, a car or engine nor the team or engineers, nothing – and we only started testing in August, it feels like yesterday, to be here after that amount of test days and have a car that is running quite well is promising.

“But you also have to keep in mind that it’s one thing doing a test where you can come into the garage and spend half an hour if you need and then go out, and another thing is being under the timeframe of a race weekend and operating within the time that you have.”