Hit the gas: Businessman chases high-speed thrills

EXECUTIVE: Chris Ruppel, an entrepreneur who founded Rapid Financial Services before selling it in 2011 to Wex Inc. At present, he serves as general manager of wage and corporate disbursements for Green Dot Corp., in addition to being a member of St. Petersburg-based Freedom Bank’s board of directors and a founder of the Press Hotel, a boutique property in Portland, Maine.

DIVERSION: Ruppel, 47, got into semi-pro auto racing about four years ago. At first he raced a street-legal Porsche. Now he hits the track in a Porsche 911 GT3 Cup Car, a factory-built race car that carries a price tag of $300,000 brand new and can reach speeds of up to 150 mph. Ruppel uses the car, a 2010 model that cost him and his fellow Press Hotel investors about $100,000, to promote the hotel. He competes at events in Florida, Georgia and South Carolina. “It’s been a great diversion for me, and a nice selling point for the hotel,” he says.