Team

Rainer Zietlow

Teamleader

In 2004 Rainer Zietlow founded his agency Challenge4 GmbH in Mannheim/Germany. Since then the holder of three Guiness World Records (GWR) completed all twelve projects successfully all with cars from Volkswagen:

  • 2005: High altitude world record for standard vehicles (GWR)
  • 2006/2007: First circumnavigation of the World with Compressed Natural Gas = CNG (GWR)
  • 2007: First crossing of Tibet with CNG
  • 2008: Visiting of all 800 CNG stations in German in 60 days
  • 2009: First drive from Lisbon to Tokyo with CNG
  • 2010: First drive on Panamericana with CNG
  • 2011: Long-distance World Record on Panamericana: From Argentina to Alaska
  • 2012: Long-distance World Record: From Melbourne to Sankt Petersburg
  • 2013: Amarok Polar Expedition: From Moscow to Petropawlovsk/Kamchatka (GWR)
  • 2014: Long-distance World Record: From Norway to South-Africa
  • 2015: Long-distance World Record: From South-Africa to Norway
  • 2016: Long-distance World Record: From Magadan to Lisbon
  • 2017: Long-distance World Record: From Dakar to Moscow

More informations to each project under www.challenge4.de

Peter Bakanov

Journalist, filmmaker and driver

Famous russian journalist and filmmaker, who works at one of the most popular and biggest automotive media in Russia – Auto Mail.Ru. Peter makes videos, films about cars and test-drives. He is also known as a radio journalist – Peter has his own program «Test-drive» on Avtoradio – one of the most popular radio station in Russia and Ukraine. Peter is a very experienced driver, he made thousands of test-drives on the roads of Russia and former Soviet Union countries, Europe and Asia. One of his favorite hobby is off-road tests, trips and off-road tuning. At this World Record tour Peter writes articles, keeps a blog, makes online streams and final film about tour together with Dmitry Makarov and camera man Alexander Pogodin.  Team member of the Long-distance World Records:

  • 2016: Long-distance World Record: From Magadan to Lisbon
  • 2017: Long-distance World Record: From Dakar to Moscow

Alexander Pogodin (Frey)

Filmmaker, camera man, сutter and driver

Alexander is a professional camera man a­nd cutter, who makes a final film about the W­orld Record Tour from Magadan to Lisbon.­ Alexander Pogodin is the fourth person ­in Rainer Zietlow`s team for Touareg Eur­asia, who joins Rainer and Marius on the­ route from Lisbon to Magadan in June, w­hereafter he will change with the Russian journal­ist Peter Bakanov. During this route Ale­x will make beautiful footage for the fina­l film. In Russia, Alexander has his own ­video agency - he and his team make a lot of different films and v­ideos: advertisement, expeditions, corpo­rate and documentary films. Also Alex is ­one of the most famous Russian camera me­n, and he makes beautiful test-drives ­with cars together with Peter Bakanov. F­or example, in Yakutia they made a test-­drive with Rainer`s Volkswagen Amarok duri­ng a Polar Expedition Amarok - 2013. So ­Alexander is a well-trained and equipped c­amera man, who can work in extrem cond­itions.

Team member of the Long-distance World Records:

  • 2016: Long-distance World Record: From Magadan to Lisbon
  • 2017: Long-distance World Record: From Dakar to Moscow 

Dmitry Makarov 

Journalist, photographer and traveler

 Dmitry Makarov is a famous Russian automotive professional photographer, journalist and traveler. Experienced driver and participant in a lot of expeditions and test-drives in Russia and in other countries. Recently Dmitry works for the famous Russian automotive event agency "Drive Event" where he take a part in organisation of numerous test-drives, journalists travels and original presentations. Today Dmitry is produce a professional photo materials and reports for different Russian media and still take a part in organization of test-drives and travels. So despite this record run being his first one he's quite experienced for the role of the third driver of the team. Dmitry will take the photos and writing for the blog during the record drive.