This past weekend MSD held their first annual Desert Dust-Up Show and Shine. The event started at the company’s headquarters in El Paso, Texas with dyno pulls, food, games and prizes for the most noteworthy cars at the show. Later the festivities moved to the El Paso Motorplex for heads-up match racing and, by the looks of this clip, an impromptu burnout contest.

While we commend the owner of this Hellcat for their willingness to beat the snot out of a brand new car for the sake of entertaining a crowd, this is one instance where the virtues of having a line lock become very obvious very quickly.

What ensues is a combination of issues – first is the fact that our driver has to perform a standard-issue brake stand to light up the tires. Normally that wouldn’t be too much of a problem, but our driver has also left the car’s gearbox in automatic mode, and the transmission continues to upshift and downshift throughout the burnout trying to decipher exactly what the person behind the wheel is trying to do.

By the time the car settles into a gear, the car’s wheel speed is up to a pretty hasty pace, and meanwhile the rear brakes are doing all they can to hold the car in place. Thirty five seconds in and we can already see the brake discs starting to glow. Ten seconds later and another hearty dip into the throttle and it is obvious that the brakes are done, but with tire smoke obscuring the view for just about everyone, nobody really seems to notice.

Another ten seconds or so goes by and the brakes are literally on fire and the tires have given up the ghost. Fortunately for the owner the fire puts itself out before it can spread to the rest of the car, but something tells us the warranty isn’t going to cover this one.

Surprisingly, the burnout was only good enough to land the Hellcat a second place finish, which begs the question: What caught on fire in the winning run?