OREANDA-NEWS. December 28, 2007. In Naberezhnye Chelny the racers of KAMAZ-Master team were seen off to Dakar-2008 rally.

For the first time the big send-off took place in the new Auto Racing Center of the team and on a more grandiose scale than in the previous years.

By tradition, the city’s administrators and KAMAZ managers, relatives, friends and fans of the famous racers came to see the team off. The activists of the city’s youth organizations and the winners of the competitions announced by the team also participated in the ceremony. The sponsors of the team, the representatives of the building organizations which had built the sports center came to see off the sportsmen.

Opening the meeting Semyon Yakubov, the permanent manager of the team, said that the task of the team at the coming racing is to stage a recovery. In other words, the racers of KAMAZ-Master will spare no effort in order to win.

Addressing the team with words of encouragement, Sergey Kogoghin, Director General of KAMAZ Inc., expressed hope that the KAMAZ racers will again be at their best.

At Dakar-2008 the team will drive on new trucks. As Semyon Yakubov said, this is a production truck KAMAZ-4326 well-known in armed forces and many domestic economic sectors. It is natural that the service staff of the team, engineers and designers of the KAMAZ R&D Center had to take pains to re-equip the vehicle for the racers’ needs.

Semyon Yakubov informed that the sports truck of the team was the first to undergo the homologation of FIA. It means that it fully satisfies technical requirements.

KAMAZ-master made its debut as a factory team twenty years ago and always drove on Kama trucks exclusively. The crews of the team became Dakar winners seven times. The KAMAZ racers compete with the rivals who exploit the vehicles by the world automobile concerns: Mercedes, MAN, Reno, DAF, Zhinaf, Mitsubishi, Tatra, Iveco.