It was for the first time that the team Busch Motorsport entered Dennis and Marc Busch in a Porsche 911 GT3 for a race at the Nürburgring Nordschleife. With a sixth place in their class, the team from Hemsbach achieved a good result at the 6 Hour Race, the highlight of the season which took place on 18th July 2009.
“I think, we can be very happy”, said team manager Harald Busch after this sixth round of the BFGoodrich Langstreckenmeisterschaft. “All the more, if you know what kind of difficulties we had to overcome with the extreme weather conditions at the Nordschleife during the race.” Indeed, at the timed practice on Saturday morning already, it was extremely difficult for all the teams to decide which tyres they should fit. And this question turned out to be even more challenging during the race which was characterised by mostly variable conditions.
At the end of the qualifying over 90 minutes duration on the 24.369 kilometres long combination of the Nürburgring Nordschleife and the sprint circuit, the red-white “twin-shop.de” Porsche was shown into eleventh grid position. “That was absolutely ok, as after some difficulties with the exhaust system during our first test on Friday we had to do a night shift to get the problems under control”, informed Harald Busch.
Dennis Busch started the race and covered nine laps before he changed the steering wheel to his brother Marc. “At that time, we had always been into fifth up to eighth position in our class. However, it is quite a difference to drive the Porsche in comparison to the Seat. In addition, there was this lottery with the tyres under these conditions. First, we had to gain some experience with the level of grip of our tyres. But then, it was allright”, said Dennis Busch.
Harald Busch, though, had to struggle more with the conditions. “During the race, nobody was able to forecast how the weather would be in the next minutes. So you just had good or bad luck with the tyres. Rain or slicks? That was the question. We’ve had bad luck twice, otherwise the result would have been a little better.“
Anyhow, the twins Dennis and Marc were quick and each of them had two stints in the 420 HP strong Porsche 911 GT3 Cup. After 38 laps and 926.022 race kilometres, they finally finished into an excellent 18th overall position and in sixth place in class Cup3.
The summer break now lies ahead of the participants in the most popular endurance racing series in Europe. The twins will start again at the seventh championship round on 29th of August 2009 for which they have planned to participate in the Seat Leon Supercopa again.
