Eccentric Erebus Motorsport owner Betty Klimenko is “more than proud” of the Supercars driver’s championship delivered by Brodie Kostecki – the driver she didn’t want.
After Kostecki clinched the title in the opening race of the Vailo Adelaide 500, Klimenko praised his achievement while remembering her reluctance to sign him three years ago.
“I’m more than proud,” she told Speedcafe. “I don’t know if there is a word that means more than proud, but [whatever it is], that’s my word. I’m over the moon, I’m ecstatic.”
But the irony of Kostecki’s triumph wasn’t lost on her.
He replaced Anton De Pasquale at Erebus in 2021 alongside fellow rookie signing Will Brown – against Klimenko’s wishes.
“I actually didn’t want him here because we’d already got a rookie,” she admitted. “But Barry [Ryan, race team boss] just hammered me and hammered me, and I went ‘Okay, okay, we’ll take Brodie’.
“And so we took Brodie and look where we are now.”
In the 10th anniversary season of Erebus in Supercars, Klimenko has achieved another milestone with her famously ‘misfit’ team of rebels and outcasts, adding to their 2017 Bathurst 1000 win.
“It took five years to win Bathurst, then another five to win the [drivers’] championship,” she said. “And I am elated. On my bucket list, it’s tick, tick.”
Her Coca-Cola Racing squad can also win the teams’ title in Sunday’s final 250km leg of the Adelaide 500, completing the upset over Supercars powerhouse team Triple Eight.
“We have to be very strategic,” Klimenko said. “We have to play it right. Hopefully, we can take the teams’ championship as well.”
She rates securing a Supercars championship as a different thrill to winning the Bathurst 1000 – with more significance.
“Not better,” she said. “It’s different because Bathurst is obtainable. It’s a one race – a championship is not one race. People always say, you know, everyone remembers who won Bathurst, not the championship. That’s only because the championship was so far away for so many people.
“Now, a privateer team [no direct factory backing] has won it, a woman owner has won it. And no privateer team has won it in 15 years and no woman has ever won it.
“So we’ve changed the history of the sport now. So I’m proud of myself, too.”
But she maintains that winning a championship makes it worth the huge cost.
“It does,” Klimenko shrugged. “I remember all those words that were said to me from other owners and people who told me I was mad, we’d never do this, we’d never get there.
“And I just now I can let them go. I can just sit back and say ‘I did it’.”
With Jack Le Brocq joining next year to replace Triple Eight-bound Will Brown, Klimenko has the security of knowing Kostecki is staying to defend his title amid forays into NASCAR.
He has her blessing to follow Shane van Gisbergen to America full-time in 2025.
“Definitely,” she declared. “After Supercars, NASCAR is my next favourite.
“But he will definitely be here next year. And Jack Le Brocq will be here, so, hopefully, the two of them can do this again.”
Klimenko also vowed that Erebus Motorsport would remain defiantly different.
“We’re known for that,” she said. “Erebus is known for doing things a little bit in the odd way. We don’t really do it the normal way.
‘But that’s us. We’ll keep doing it our way.”
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