Klimenko to make rare Supercars appearance
Erebus Motorsport owner Betty Klimenko will make a rare appearance at a Supercars race this weekend.
Klimenko will make the trek from her New South Wales base to Launceston for the Tasmania SuperSprint.
It will mark the first time she has been trackside to support her team since the introduction of the Gen3 rules.
Erebus has been the big winner of the new regulations, the team consistently fighting for race wins over the first three rounds.
It currently leads the teams' championship standings while both Brodie Kostecki and Will Brown have been race winners and Kostecki leads the drivers' standings.
According to Klimenko, the Tassie appearance will be a chance to congratulate her squad on its rapid start to Supercars' new era.
“The face time with the team, that’s one of the main reasons I’m going," she told Motorsport.com.
"Also to see the race, but it’s just to tell them I’m proud of them, I am here, I haven’t fallen into a crack in the earth somewhere.
"It will be interesting. I like to see myself in the garage because I always get pacey and I haven’t done that for so long. It will be fun to go back to the garage and see everybody and see the sponsors and just immerse myself again in that culture."
Klimenko has been absent from the track in recent months as she's focused on the establishment of her farm in country NSW.
“It just so happened that all of my animals came at once," she explained. "Basically, between you, me and the gatepost, I’ve had to learn to be a farmer.
"I’ve had a few little issues with my health but at the time that these races were on, it was better that I stayed on the farm.
"I’m learning a lot about animals, it’s great. This is my next venture into the worlds of Betty. I’ve gone from building shopping centres to building race cars and now I’m into building farms – but I’m still very, very much into the cars."
Despite her absence, Klimenko says she remains committed to the team and her majority share of ownership in the immediate future.
However she is equally happy to let minority owner and CEO Barry Ryan handle day-to-day and trackside operations.
“That was the whole idea of Erebus when it started, it was to go forward and always to go forward," she said.
"It wasn’t about me, it was about being Erebus and that’s why I never named it after my initials or whatever. It doesn’t matter how many different generations, it just goes forward.
"Sometimes people who deserve a chance at motorsport and being involved in motorsport on the business side of it don’t ever get that chance because you need backing, you need money, you need everything else, and sometimes it’s really nice just to sit back and watch these people give a thousand percent instead of a hundred.
"And that’s what Barry has done, he has put in a thousand percent.
"He knows what are good days to ring me and what aren’t good days to ring me, and we chat for hours about motorsport, about the cars, about the team. I speak to him at least a gazillion times a week.
"So I’m still involved in everything that happens, I’m just not involved so much on track."
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