The international Silk Way Rally Raid involving the gas-fueled KAMAZ truck finished two stages. The truck's team consists of Sergey Kupriyanov, Press Secretary of the Gazprom Management Committee Chairman, Alexander Kupriyanov and Anatoly Tanin.

As part of the race, the competitors left behind several special sections more than 850 kilometers long in total length. The 333.3 kilometer section of stage two was especially hard due to difficult navigation and continuous dust haze. Summing up two days of the race, the team finished ninth in the overall ranking of truck vehicles.

The gas equipment installed in KAMAZ showed no malfunction. “Despite great vibrations we had no problems with gas feeding. The truck ran smoothly on the race track,” said Sergey Kupriyanov.

Background

Gas-fueled KAMAZ is a special model of a sport truck vehicle powered by natural gas. The truck was customized by the KAMAZ Master team with Gazprom's assistance in order to promote natural gas use as a vehicle fuel.

The international Silk Way Rally is a highly prestigious off-road race, as popular as the legendary Dakar Rally. Gazprom acted as a general sponsor of the first rally raid series that took off along the Kazan – Ashkhabad route in 2009. Russia hosts the rally from 2010.

The 2013 race runs along the Moscow – Tambov – Volgograd – Elista – Astrakhan route with the total length of 4,097 kilometers, including 2,822 kilometers of high speed off-road sections. More than hundred participants from 27 countries worldwide including 26 truck teams compete in the race.

The race began with a ceremonial start on July 5 in the Red Square in Moscow, its first stage finished on July 7, the second – on July 8.