The only debutants at the top category of the 24H of Le Mans this year is the South Korean luxury brand Genesis. Both GMR-001 made it to Hyperpole, which exceeded expectations. Speaking exclusively to Motorsport Week, Dani Juncadella summarized their fist Le Mans so far.
“I think we exceeded our expectations. I was actually hoping to be in the top 10, but both cars making it through comfortably, or I think comfortably, like we seemed competitive. I think on one lap our car is particularly strong.
“We obviously, you know, we are at the third race, and of course we want to start to show a bit of our potential, and, you know, we are improving day by day, that’s why I think we are making steps forward, and that’s clearly the case with the pace. I think the race will be a bit different. I’m pretty sure some other brands are probably still not showing their full potential, but yeah, a good start,” said Juncadella.
The Genesis had a strong debut in Imola, where one car finished the race. By the second round in Spa, one car scored points. In just their third race, both cars have qualified in the top 10. The main question is reliability, though Juncadella rules it out: “I don’t think it’s really like fundamentally reliability, I think the car is reliable, it’s just we sometimes find little things that are a bit unexpected, like in our car, both races, we had at the start, when I was driving, a misfire in the engine, and there was two different issues.
“It’s little things that we still need to nurse around the car, and I wouldn’t say the car is just unreliable, it’s just there’s things that we’re encountering, because it’s only our third race, and we haven’t had the time to really test a lot, we’ve obviously done a fair bit of testing, and we’ve done some endurance testing, but it’s always easy to find little issues that we need to address, and I think if everything goes well, we can run smoothly through 24 hours, it’s just a matter of being aware that it can happen, and it doesn’t have to be a disappointment.”