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Early in the morning 28 January 1938 at the highway between Frankfurt and Darmstadt Rudolf Caracciola in a Mercedes-Benz broke the road speed records for 1 km and 1 Mile flying start that Rosemeyer had set during the "Rekordwoche" in October 1937. On the first southbound towards Darmstadt run Caracciola made the flying km in 8.40 seconds and the flying mile in 13.42 seconds. His return run back towards Frankfurt went even faster with times of 8.24 s & 13.38 s.

The Auto Union team was immediately ready to re-take the record. A car had been completely rebuilt by Professor Eberan-Eberhorst from experience gained by recent wind tunnel experiments. Even if it wasn't completely understood at that time, the Auto Union technicians had, by covering the underside of the car with "skirts", in fact created something that well may be called a ground effect car. At about 11 a.m. Rosemeyer started his first run. He had no wish to fool around more than neccessary and immediately selected a high speed configuration with all new fairings in place.

The starting place was near the 2 km mark on the highway so a distance of some 5.5 km was reserved for the cars to accelerate before the timed sector started. The finish line for the 1 km run was at 8.6 km and for the Mile run near the 9.2 km mark. The car then had to make a return run in a restricted time period for the record to be valid, the mean of the two times giving the end result.

Rosemeyer made a fairly slow first stint but during the return run he reached a speed of 429.9 km/h. The engine had not reached the optimum temperature during the first attempt and Rosemeyer decided to have a second try. The radiator was closed a bit more and the air escape outlets under the car were also closed, at that time probably considered a minor change, and Rosemeyer started on his final run at 11.46 a.m. One and a half minute later after passing the 1 km finish line at a speed of approximately 432 km/h the car moved left towards the grass, returned in a slide, rolled over and disintegrated in a series of somersaults. The events can be followed in the picture below. Bernd Rosemeyer was found in the woods over 100 m from the wreck. His heart was still beating when Dr. Gläser reached him but it stopped shortly afterwards.