DTM Presentation, D??sseldorf

An incident, in which nobody got injured, occurred during the DTM presentation programme at D??sseldorfs K?¶nigsallee. 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, HWAs 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 Brunos 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.

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