24-hour race on the Nürburgring 2009
The 24-hour race at the Nürburgring 2009 was the 37th edition of the 24-hour race at the Nürburgring .
General
For 2009 the speed differences should be reduced. In addition, the performance of the fastest classes (up to and over 4000 cm³) was limited and no class under 2000 cm³ was advertised, although they often drive very quickly in winding sections or downhill. In contrast, large-volume vehicles were registered again, which had been very slow in previous years. The extension of the set of rules was welcomed to enable vehicles according to FIA GT3 or the GT4 rules of the SRO to participate without major modifications, but not the restrictions for vehicles that had been built according to the previously applicable rules and now had to be converted. The extensive measures intended to enable the FIA GT3 cars to have equal opportunities and chances to win were controversial. Normal petrol pumps have been used up to now, and refueling the tanks, which can hold up to 120 liters, takes a correspondingly long time, which benefited economical cars. Now special tank canisters had to be purchased and used, with which, due to the given different flow rates, economical cars need just as long to refuel as those with high consumption. Due to new rules and the economic crisis, a. Zakspeed with the Viper as well as the team from Wolfgang Land, which is often victorious in the VLN, did not participate, and Mamerow had to cancel first.
The trend towards expensive racing cars illustrates the fact that, with eight representatives of the luxury brand Aston Martin, just as many were named as the large-series manufacturers Opel and Ford put together, because four of these two brands were each with a maximum of 2500 cm³ at the start (plus the Ford GT ).
Timed practice
Somewhat surprisingly, Dirk Adorf achieved the best practice time of 8: 36.536 minutes (average 176.87 km / h) in the Ford GT from Raeder Motorsport , thanks to Audi slipstream on the straight. Manthey and the factory Audis were just under, three other Porsches and an Alpina -BMW up to ten seconds behind. Since the times were much slower than in the previous year due to the rules and the organizer had reserved the right to take further measures to adjust performance until the start of the race, it was questionable to what extent the teams had revealed their cards. However, the times in the race were on a similar level.
run
In the race, the Ford was able to hold its own in front of the defending champion, but then fell behind, as did two of the factory Audi. Up to the 19th hour, two Audi and two Manthey-Porsches fought so closely that a new distance record was to be expected, especially since the number of participants was quite low and the weather was good. The defending champion was given a three-minute penalty for yellowing violations, but this was withdrawn after data records had refuted the alleged violation. Damage to the Audi with starting number 99 brought a preliminary decision, because the other Audi with starting number 97 (Christian Abt, Jean-Francois Hemroulle , Pierre Kaffer , Lucas Luhr) was only third at the time, but was able to repair the second Manthey GT3 after a short repair ( Emmanuel Collard , Wolf Henzler , Richard Lietz , Dirk Werner ) take second place. VW again achieved good results among the top 20 with several Scirocco powered by petrol or natural gas. BMW was atypically poorly represented, only one vehicle was among the top 25. BMW had four racing touring cars on offer (Z4, 3-series WTCC, M3 for ALMS and GT4), but not yet developed a vehicle for the FIA GT3 class. Only the two BMW Alpina B6 GT3s were represented.
A new record was the distance of 3933.6 km (155 laps at 25,378 m), which was covered in 24:05 hours with an average of 163.3 km / h. Manthey won for the fourth time in a row, for Marcel Tiemann it was the fifth victory, making him the sole record winner and clearly surpassing his father's two victories.
Result
literature
24 STUNDEN NÜRBURGRING NORDSCHLEIFE 2009 , Group C Motorsport Verlag Duisburg, ISBN 978-3-928-54058-2
