Rich Lister Betty Klimenko has no regrets about the “tens of millions” of dollars she spent to establish Erebus Motorsport as a Supercars title contender, declaring that it was worth “every cent”.
Celebrating the 10th anniversary of her team’s step up from GT3 to Supercars, Klimenko’s first appearance of the season at the Tasmania SuperSprint coincided with Coca-Cola Racing maintaining its lead in the drivers’ and teams’ championships.
She’s declared that the fortune she’s spent on building the famously ‘misfit’ squad into the new team to beat has been worth it.
She arrived in a blaze of publicity and controversy in 2013 after buying stalwart Ford team Stone Brothers Racing, switching the rebranded operation to privately run Mercedes-AMG E63s.
Most of Klimenko’s huge expenditure was on paying AMG race division HWA to help develop a 5.0-litre version of the tri-star brand’s racing V8.
She is reputed to have spent as much as $40 million annually during her three-year campaign with the orphan AMGs, winning two races before switching to way cheaper Holden Commodores.
She could afford the cost because, as the adopted daughter of the late Westfield co-founder John Saunders, she inherited a part of a property development business worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
Asked if what she had spent on Erebus Motorsport over the past decade was worth it, Klimenko declared “Oh, every cent.”
When prompted about the many millions it has cost her, she interjected: “Tens of Millions.”
Still, Klimenko maintains she has got value from her involvement, including victory in the 2017 Bathurst 1000 and now with Coca-Cola Racing duo Brodie Kostecki and Will Brown leading the field.
She thinks the super-costly Mercedes-AMG ‘Car of the Future’ development experience has paid off a decade later.
“Oh, yeah,” she said, alluding to the lessons learned from the technical restrictions placed on the Mercs.
“Look, it’s hard to put into words, but the value in the beginning was the fact that we couldn’t bring in a car like everyone else. We were told we’re not allowed to; we had to bring in a new manufacturer.
“So, yes, that cost a lot in development and research and everything else. That was the main expense. Going into the Holdens was nothing compared to that. But I learned a lot through the whole journey and it’s amazing to see that we’re right back to practically where the Mercs were when we had to dumb them down.
“But it’s all worth it. You can’t cry over spilt milk or even not spilt milk. It’s made us what it is today. So it was worth it.”
Klimenko is the only female Supercars team owner and, arguably, the wealthiest.
She was named in the Australian Financial Review’s 2022 Rich List, ranking the top 200 Australians with a minimum net worth of $629 million.
She was 39th with an estimated wealth of $2.73 billion from property development and real estate holdings, shared with family members.
No other Supercars owner made the list, despite the likes of the Walkinshaw family, Triple Eight major shareholder Tony Quinn, Tickford Racing co-owner Rod Nash, DJR owner Brett Ralph, and SCT rail transport magnate Peter Smith – who holds a TRC run by BJR – all worth several hundreds of millions.
Also very rich are Brad Jones, Grove Racing’s Stephen Grove, Team 18 owner Charlie Schwerkolt, PremiAir Racing’s Peter Xiberras and CoolDrive Racing’s Blanchard family.
To her credit, in Supercars, Klimenko doesn’t flaunt her extreme wealth, mucking in with her team at events and available to fans.
Symmons Plains was her first public appearance since last year’s season-ending Adelaide 500 and she doesn’t plan to be in the paddock again until the Sydney SuperNight at the end of July.
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