Video: 2008 Mercedes-Benz C-Class DTM goes up in flames during presentation!

Boy, talk about things going wrong when they shouldn’t! Listen to this; a couple of days ago, during a DTM presentation in Düsseldorf, a 2002 Mercedes CLK-DTM race car dressed in a 2008 C-Class outfit (for demonstration purposes) went up in flames leaving the huge crowd totally speechless! Mercedes even came out with an official press-release saying that the fire was caused due to an overheated brake that occurred when the car’s driver, Bruno Spengler spun a few (very hot) doughnuts! Ouch… -Press Release after the jump

Via: Motorpasion

PRES RELEASE: DTM Presentation, Düsseldorf

Düsseldorf, Apr 16, 2007

An incident, in which nobody got injured, occurred during the DTM presentation programme at Düsseldorf’s Königsallee. The rear of a former DTM race car (Mercedes-Benz CLK-DTM from the year 2002), driven by Bruno Spengler, caught fire due to an overheated brake. The car was a five-year-old race car that had been fitted with the bodywork of the new C-Class for demonstration runs.

The fire brigade extinguished the fire within three minutes. “First of all the important thing: nothing happened to anyone”, said Bruno Spengler. “I noticed smoke coming into the cockpit, I stopped immediately, I got out of the car and discovered that the rear of the car had caught fire due to the untypical overheating of the rear brake when I spun doing some doughnuts.” After an initial inspection, the team found that the car can be repaired. Gerhard Ungar, HWA’s technical director: “The so-called doughnuts (spinning of the car on the spot), put untypical strain on the brakes because of a lack of cooling airstream. Therefore, the brakes on Bruno’s car today overheated and caught fire. The reason of the fire is still being investigated.”

The quick intervention by the fire brigade has shown that the safety concept made up beforehand by the fire brigade, the police and the ITR was effective. The event continued as planned.

Technorati: Mercedes+C-Class, DTM, Race, Accident, auto+news, car+news, automobile, cars, automotive, vehicles, Carscoop, blogs, 2007