With the hypercar class at Le Mans continuing to go from strength to strength, three new teams are set to join the fray over the next two years, Genesis in 2026, followed by Ford and McLaren in ’27. All have taken the opportunity of the 2025 running of the Le Mans 24 hours to provide updates on their progress.
Genesis Magma Racing
Starting with Genesis – set to race under the Magma Racing sub-brand – its LMDH hypercar, which will use an Oreca chassis, is well on its way to track testing. With an almost complete car on display in the fan village team principal, Cyril Abiteboul, told PMW that the in-house developed engine had been running successfully on the dyno for several weeks and that overall development of the car was on-track, with testing due to start later in the summer.
The cars will be run out of a new base at the Paul Ricard circuit in France, in conjunction with IDEC Sport. Hyundai Motorsport will also move into a new headquarters in Offenbach, Germany, with a technical centre in Fechenheim, near Frankfurt, which will become the central base for the company’s WRC and customer racing operations. Combined, the French and German facilities will cover more than 10,000 square metres with approximately 300 employees, including around 50 who will be recruited to the Genesis program before the end of 2026. The engineering side of the operation will be headed up by Justin Taylor, with an extensive resume spanning multiple works manufacturers
McLaren set for 2027 debut
McLaren meanwhile has confirmed further details of its 2027 project, notably that its Dallara chassis will be equipped with a turbocharged V6 supplied by Autotecnica Motori. McLaren Racing CEO Zach Brown also noted that though the team will initially focus its efforts on WEC, it was open to involvement in IMSA further down the line. “Right now, we’re laser-focused on WEC. You wouldn’t want to go into two championships at the same time,” Brown remarked. “We really like IMSA, racing in North America is very important to us. We’re moving to a new race shop in Indy, so it’ll be something that we’ll consider. We’d like to do it, but one step at a time.”
Dan Sayers to head Ford Hypercar project
Finally, Ford has clarified the progress with its 2027 program, confirming that it will also partner with Oreca on the chassis, despite its long running relationship with Multimatic for its GT projects. It also announced Dan Sayers as program manager, who most recently was program director at Red Bull Powertrains, having previously headed up Aston Martin’s GT racing program for Prodrive as technical director. The program is very much in the early stages, with a team partner and even where the operation will be run from still TBC.
