Home team beats Aussies in Ice Race II

Russian teams delivered a killer blow to upstart Aussies in the 2012 Mazda MX-5 Ice Race in Yekaterinburg in Central Russia yesterday. In the Russian-based reprise of last year's Swedish-run MX-5 promo event, the home side was victorious in both the team's race and Russia versus Australia 'SuperFinal'.

The event was held in part to publicise Mazda Russia's 'promotion' to standalone status as a direct factory appointed distributor. Until recently, the Russian operation, which sells around 40,000 cars annually but will soon commence Russian production of key models, was part of Mazda Europe.

The 2012 Mazda MX-5 Ice Race pitted a six-driver two-car Australian team against a 12-driver three-car Russian squad. Teams race identically prepared race-spec MX-5s on street-legal winter tyres.

The Australian group travelled to Russia at the invitation of Mazda Russia following the spirited completion between to the two squads at last year's 20-team, 30-country Ice Race 2011. Unlike Sweden, however, the Russian conditions were not well suited to the Aussies and the locals won both race formats easily.

Mazda Russia ran elimination races to choose its driver line-up. For Australia, four of the 2011 Team Mazda Australia drivers returned, Drive's Toby Hagon, Top Gear's James Stanford, motoring.com.au's man in Europe, Michael Taylor and Editot in Chief, Mike Sinclair. Taking up the two vacant spots were Marton Pettendy and freelance journalist, and former CarPoint editor, Glenn Butler.

The central Russian city of Yekaterinburg played host to the event. The fourth biggest city in the Russia Federation with a population of approx 1.5m, Yekaterinburg is around 1600km east of Moscow.

Look out for an upcoming feature on the Russian v Australia event at motoring.com.au