Genesis fires up WEC LMDh engine for the first time

Genesis has revealed that it fired up the engine for its new GMR-001 LMDh car for the first time in late February, two months before the full launch of the car at the New York International Auto Show.

The fire-up procedure went “exactly as planned” under the supervision of Hyundai Motorsport’s Head of Powertrain Julien Moncet and Engine Workshop Leader Rob Benson, according to Genesis.

Hyundai’s luxury car brand further revealed that it started working on designing the V8 motor in June of last year, with the entire process taking just four months.

It started assembling the new engine in the first months of 2025 ahead of the scheduled fire-up.

As revealed previously, Genesis’ V8 engine is based on the in-line four-cylinder motor that powers the Hyundai i20 N in the World Rally Championship. The two engines share 60% of the components.

Building an entirely new power unit from scratch wasn’t possible due to the short timeframe between the approval of the project by the board in September last year and its planned entry into the World Endurance Championship in 2026.

“The I4 engine is a very, very sophisticated, very efficient engine,” said Hyundai Motorsport Technical Director Francois-Xavier Demaison. “It's a proper race engine, so it's a very good base for developing an engine for WEC. Rallying is a sort of endurance race, so for an engine to the 24 Hours of Le Mans it’s a good place to start from.

“With the time we had available to develop the engine we immediately knew we did not have time to completely design a new engine from scratch. For the main part of an engine, you need a long time to design, validate and of course, to produce.

“Every part needs to be tested over many kilometres, and the I4 engine from our World Rally Championship car has already been well-proven. It became the logical step to carry over as many parts as possible from the 4-cylinder engine.”

With the first fire-up completed, Hyundai is now focused on completing a series of bench tests with the engine.

The engine will then be connected to the gearbox before being linked to the spec hybrid unit that is common in all LMDh prototypes.

“After the first crank and the first revs in a steady state, we will progressively add more heat into the system, performing long runs,” said team boss Cyril Abiteboul.

“Then with different dynos, we can test in a more dynamic way, reproducing closer the cycles the engine will do around a race track like Le Mans. We can test equipped to the gearbox, and the hybrid system until we have the full powertrain.”

Genesis has selected Oreca, one of the four licensed LMP2 manufacturers, as the chassis partner for its first endurance racing programme with an LMDh prototype.

A full-scale model of the Genesis GMR-001 was revealed in New York this week, showcasing its full two-tone livery.

Genesis will also contest the IMSA SportsCar Championship in 2027, one year after its first campaign in the WEC.