QUEEN OF THE V8S
From orphan to billionaire’s daughter to V8 Supercars team owner, Betty Klimenko has led an amazing life.
The extraordinary story of team owner Betty Klimenko,
All sorts of folk make up the wonderful world of motorsport — eccentric, weird, boisterous, flamboyant, bogan and occasionally glamorous.
One character who stands out in an already a colourful crowd is V8 Supercars team owner Betty Klimenko.
She has led an extraordinary life, starting with her abandonment at an orphanage by her drug-addicted prostitute mother when she was two months old.
Her life changed when a young John Saunders and his wife Eta picked her out at the orphanage. Born Jeno Schwarcz, Saunders was a Hungarian Jew who spent five years in a Nazi concentration camp during World War II. His father and brother were killed at Auschwitz.
Saunders emigrated with his wife to Australia in 1950 and went into business with Frank Lowy. The pair founded the Westfield shopping mall conglomerate which now comprises 119 malls in four countries. The company has assets estimated at $73 billion but Betty SaundersKlimenko, to use her full name, is by no means a trust fund baby.
When she married second husband Daniel, Saunders cut her off from the family empire and the couple had to make their own way in life. Not until the birth of her third child (she had two with her first husband) were father and daughter reconciled in hospital.
Striding around the V8 Supercars paddock with her kilt, black boots, tattooed arms and purple hair, Klimenko looks the antithesis of someone from a monied background.
The Erebus race team owner has bemused a few of the prissier owners and management with her in-yourface enthusiasm. A few have even mumbled motorsport isn’t the place for a woman and that Klimenko has lowered the tone of motor racing, if such a thing was possible.
It’s the fans who make the sport vibrant. The teams and drivers are just there to provide the entertainment and Klimenko is by far the most popular team owner.
Her fans love her. More than 10,000 follow her on Facebook, with one saying she is “one of this nation’s most inspiring woman, she epitomises hard work, caring, passion and having a go. Most importantly, she inspires us all to just be ourselves, not care what others think and follow our dreams.”
Inspirational and caring she may be but she also has a steely side and doesn’t suffer fools lightly.
“Most people think I only have the V8 Supercars team but I run five race car teams,” said Klimenko from her Sydney home.
“People, especially men, come up to me and say how glamorous running a team is and it must be great drinking champagne in the corporate suite. Rubbish!
“I tell them I’m probably up to my elbows in oil and stuff helping out in the garage. After 17 years in the sport [two in V8 Supercars] and the only woman team owner in the world who has never raced or been in a team before, I still get the same buzz I always have.
“The bug started when I did a drivers’ training course at Mount Cotton after buying a Porsche. I got talking to a driver there and ended up sponsoring him for a while. After that, I decided to buy an F3 car, which we only raced once before the transporter truck blew up and destroyed the car.
“I thought about giving it [motor racing] all up but decided not to. I moved into the GT category running a car someone else owned. But that all got too complicated with insurance and stuff, so I thought sod it and bought an SLS Mercedes GT car and the rest is history.”
Motor racing is an expensive pastime and Klimenko has reputedly spent $44 million indulging her passion.
The Australian Daily Telegraph newspaper reported in April that she was personally broke using the “pocket money’’ paid to her from a family trust to service a loan she took out after exhausting her personal wealth to keep the team in the game.
Things have looked up since, with Erebus Motorsport V8 signing a major commercial sponsor.
“We worked out that it costs about $5.8 million to run a two-car team at the bottom end of [V8] pit row. At the top end, it’s closer to $9 million to run a really successful and professional team.
“I knew for the first couple of years that it would come out of my own pocket but knew at some stage that it had to be a paying business.
“What people don’t understand is that there is no endless supply of money. It has to be run as a successful business and we’re almost there now.”
As with all good teams, whether in sport or marriage, it takes everyone to make things work. While Klimenko is the face of Erebus Motorsport, husband Daniel is her rock. He is a man of few words who shuns the spotlight.
“It was funny in the beginning when people would ask who the owner of the team was and they’d be pointed in our direction. They’d come over and start the conversation with him. He would simply say ‘I’m not the idiot, she is’.
“He gave up all his own stuff [as a music producer] to come and help the ‘idiot’. Keeping all the balls in the air takes a lot out of me and without Daniel, I wouldn’t cope. We spend so much time together that we have to get on and my husband is my Rock of Gibraltar.”
Klimenko and her husband are the human face of motor racing, never taking themselves too seriously and always making time for their fans.
The GT arm of Erebus Motorsport has been on the podium in the last few years and the fledgling V8 Supercars team notched their first victory when Lee Holdsworth won at Winton in April.
The team’s next big adventure is next weekend’s Bathurst 1000 and Klimenko would love to at least get on the podium, as she has with the GT arm, if not win.