Dark Horse: Erebus Motorsport, Out of the Shadows has been billed as a warts and all look at the tumultuous history of the squad through its arrival in GT racing and subsequent stint in Supercars.
Being funded by Erebus majority owner Betty Klimenko, there has been significant scepticism over just how warts and all the doco would be.
That scepticism is in part warranted; by its nature it could never be anything that wouldn’t skew, even gently, back to a positive portrayal of the team.
That is not criticism of the production team, Klimenko or Erebus. That was a fate set with the decision to produce the documentary in the first place.
However, one area that many thought would be most airbrushed perhaps offers the most genuine insight of all – the split with Kostecki.
By watching the documentary fans will finally learn what was at the heart of Kostecki walking out on the team after winning the Supercars title in 2023.
Spoiler alert – it was a rift with Barry Ryan.
That may not seem like new news, but keep in mind it is not something that the team, or Kostecki, have publicly detailed before.
The reasons for the rift remain unanswered and the documentary doesn’t include direct mentions of, or insights from, the likes of Kostecki’s former manager (and former Erebus commercial contractor) Nathan Cayzer, former Erebus managing director Shannen Kiely and even Peter Adderton – all people that were at the coalface of the split.
Producer Andrew Janson confirmed to Speedcafe that Kiely was asked to participate in the documentary but declined, while Cayzer and Adderton weren’t approached.
But in terms of addressing the core issue, Klimenko, Ryan and Kostecki all offer more detailed insight than ever before.
In fact, Ryan directly references the rift, with the caveat that he and Kostecki had never had any direct confrontations.
“To hear towards the end of [2023] that Brodie didn’t want to be with us anymore was one of the most random things I’ve heard,” Ryan said in his interview.
“I was like, ‘what do you mean? We’ve won a championship’. Betty said, ‘let me deal with it’ and I let Betty deal with it because for some reason I seemed to be the problem, or part of the problem.
“[Kostecki] had some frustration around me, which couldn’t have come from me and Brodie having any argument because we never did. It had come from other sources.”
Klimenko is slightly less direct, but reveals that there was one problem that Kostecki had that she couldn’t fix, believed to be Ryan’s involvement as the team figurehead.
“Just before the end of the year, Brodie had come to me and said, ‘I’m not happy, I want to leave’,” she explained, before referencing her decision to allow Will Brown out of his contract.
“And I said no. I said, ‘I made a mistake with Will. I shouldn’t have done it. I’m sorry Brodie, I can’t. You’ve got to finish out your contract.”
She continued: “He said, ‘I don’t want to finish out my contract’. I said, ‘why?’. He goes, ‘for A, B, C, D and E reasons’.
“I said, ‘if I can change and fix these reasons, are we good?’. And he says, ‘yep, we are’.
“There was only one thing there that I couldn’t fix. I told him that won’t be fixed, it will be changed, but it won’t be fixed.”
That plays into the well-worn theory that Ryan was set to depart the team at the end of 2023, or be moved into a different role, before a change of heart from Klimenko – something Kostecki also addresses in the documentary.
“I was having some difficulties with the team at the time,” he said. “I was getting mixed information of what was going to happen with the team moving forward.
“Obviously there was some issues with myself and the way that Barry communicated with each other (sic).
“I wasn’t really that excited about what was happening moving forward, and there was mixed things of Barry leaving the team, or getting moved to a different part of the team.
“It all went dead quiet for two to three months. It was a pretty awkward time for myself and I just didn’t really feel like I got the chance to celebrate a championship that I was able to win with the team.
“It was all very awkward.”
Beyond the unexpected insight into that particular saga, the entire series is well-produced and enjoyable to watch.
Dark Horse: Erebus Motorsport, Out of the Shadows premieres on Kayo, Binge and Foxtel tonight.
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