With ESP off you can donut all day long. However, intersting thing about traction control on my CLK55 (208 body) - at the drag strip with ESP off I noticed that if the wheels are spinning in the rear, and the car is travling forward at more than like 10 or 15 miles and hour, traction control comes back on!
probably a "feature" from MB introduced by lawyers :p
Also with K&N drop in air filters my CLK55 gained like another 15lb ft of torque at the wheels, so it was probably getting close to 400lb ft at the crank
