Besides being the longtime chairman of Penske Corp., which he turned into a transportation empire, Roger Penske has formidable teams in Nascar and in the IndyCar Series. He will have four cars competing in the Indianapolis 500 in May. He has put together a top-level sports car racing program. Oh, and he just celebrated his 81st birthday.

When will this guy ever slow down?

“My wife asks me that every weekend,” Penske said recently in an interview at the New York Stock Exchange.

Instead, he considers his racing enterprises “my fishing trip and golf game on the weekends.”

Then he laughed and added: “No, it’s a brand-building exercise. It’s an asset we have among our 56,000 people. We create winners. We have a positive impact on our customers and our brand. As long as I’m able, I want to be connected with motor sports because it’s something we know. We’re in the transportation business.”

And racing delivers an immediate bottom line.

“It’s like having your quarterly earnings every weekend,” Penske said. “When you have your quarterly earnings every weekend, you got to be on top of it.”