The Mazda2 might not be the first car you think of when you think about racing and Mazdas, but maybe it should be. After all, you can build and race one for less than you'd pay just to buy many race cars in slightly higher-speed classes, and there's a good chance to win some contingency cash to help fund the effort.

Here, you'll see a brand-new Mazda2 being turned into a B-Spec racer live on the floor of the Performance Racing Industry show floor ahead of the 25 Hours of Thunderhill. Appropriately, the build took about 25 hours of work.

Put together by Mazdaspeed Motorsports Development, the pint-sized racer finished 13th in class in the E3 class, and 37th overall out of 69 finishing cars.

That's not exactly a dominating performance, but when you consider the little Mazda2 finished ahead of some of the vaunted models of racing like the Porsche 944, BMW 325is, and even Mazda's own Miata, as well as brand-new sports cars the Scion FR-S, it's not so bad at all--especially in a 25-hour race, where anything can happen.