OXFORD — Men of a certain age know the drill.

Buy some expensive, fast toys. Build a bigger house. Switch jobs. Change careers completely.

Ricky Rolfe isn’t having a midlife crisis, although you would find few 47-year-olds more entitled to one after the last 16 months.

Known weekdays for his expertise with race car chassis and weekends for his wizardry with the steering wheel, Rolfe took inventory and simply decided it was time to start his own business.

“We really just wanted to have time to work on our own cars,” Rolfe said. “They’re so time-consuming. Especially tour racing. People who aren’t working on their cars all the time aren’t going to keep up.”

Rolfe, 47, of Albany Township, recently left his long-term post at Race Basics in Andover and joined forces with Mark Brackett of Jay to form RB Performance.

That may sound like a mouthful of rural Zip codes, but it’s a natural progression for an entrepreneur who races in New Hampshire and Vermont and builds cars for drivers from Connecticut.

“We’ve been working to start our clientele,“ Rolfe said. “We have (seven-time ACT champion) Jean-Paul Cyr and a couple of cars from Waterford (Conn.) I tried hard not to take anything away from Mitch and Judy (Green, owners of Race Basics) and them.”

Together with the car owner’s company, Brackett Mechanical, RB Performance will go mainstream this weekend as title sponsor of Saturday’s Pro All Stars Series race at Oxford Plains Speedway.

PASS makes its return to Oxford for the first time in five years on the eve of Sunday’s 38th annual TD Bank 250. Rolfe won’t compete in the Saturday headliner, but he takes his customary place as one of the local favorites in the late model showcase.

“We all put in too much time and money not to make this race,” Rolfe said of the 250. “It’s not the end of the world if we don’t, but it would hurt for a while.”

Rolfe understands pain more acutely than most of his competitors.

He was diagnosed with colon cancer in March 2010. Surgeons subsequently removed one-third of that organ along with 40 lymph nodes in an effort to stop the disease from spreading.

Competition continued through the heat of summer. Rolfe even strategically scheduled chemotherapy treatments for early in the week, allowing him to build his energy for Saturday nights.

The sport he loved since his days as a Figure Eight racer in the mid-1980s became his refuge.

“Racing really helped me through the whole deal,” Rolfe said. “I didn’t have time to think about it when I was working on the race car or driving. That made it go a lot quicker.”

Doctors and oncologists traditionally set a benchmark of five years before they will proclaim a patient cancer-free. Caution and superstition often keep patients from speaking about their silent adversary.

Rolfe, on the other hand, smiles while defiantly throwing out a happier c-word.

“One hundred percent. I’m cured. For now, anyway,” Rolfe said. “You never know if it will come back, but right now I’m all clear.”

The longest race during Rolfe’s illness didn’t go badly.

He made the cardinal mistake that costs so many local racers in a marathon event — blistering the first set of tires — before rallying to seventh at the finish of the 2010 TD Bank 250.

“We drew dead last in our heat,” Rolfe recalled. “That’s a pretty common theme for us with tour racing.”

With his health restored, Rolfe has returned to the American-Canadian Tour, also competing at OPS when the schedule allows.

That docket is about to pick up dramatically. In the space of 20 days, Rolfe will compete in the 250, then an ACT race at Beech Ridge Motor Speedway in Scarborough, followed by a date at New Hampshire Motor Speedway.

“Loudon is like a super speedway to us,” Rolfe said. “We take testing there pretty seriously. The aerodynamics are important, so the body has to be perfect. It‘s not quite as big as the 250, but it‘s the next-best thing.”

Rolfe was runner-up to Ben Rowe in the 2004 Oxford crown jewel. Matt Kenseth chased him to the finish line that July.

It was the year local longshot Alan Wilson slid off the backstretch while leading the race in the late stages.

“I blistered the tires with about 50 laps to go and I had to slow down so I could finish,” Rolfe said.

He enters the 2011 edition with less momentum than usual, despite winning the 40-lap feature at Oxford on opening night in May.

Last Saturday’s event ended with his car on the business end of a wrecker. Rolfe was caught up in a multi-car tangle that involved Carey Martin and T.J. Brackett.

Rolfe has a different ride ready for the 250 in this, his third season since forming the partnership with Mark Brackett.

“He wanted to run the tour and I wanted to go tour racing, and I couldn’t do it on my own,” Rolfe said. “We pretty much combined the teams. That’s why we have so many cars.”

Based on Rolfe’s reputation as a fabricator and a straight shooter, those cars are bound to have a shop full of company soon.

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