Sofas are festooned with cushions covered in sequins and fur. According to Klimenko, her parents almost took home someone else when they visited the adoption nursery at Sydney's old Crown Street Women's Hospital in 1959. "They treated me exactly how they would treat any new owner," she insists. team drivers David Though Klimenko spent money hand over fist, Erebus languished at the back of the field in most races. "It had little pearly things on it and he probably thought it was beautiful." "The looks around the table! "He wanted me to look like a businesswoman – all the time," she says.Klimenko tells me she once asked her father why he seemed to be harder on her than on everyone else. "I'm short from there to there," she says, indicating the distance between elbows and wrists, "and I've got tiny hands."

Newton has no doubt the adjustment was difficult. "My sister and I love each other," she says. She’s also turning heads in Sydney's Vaucluse – which suits this self-described bogan and daughter of Westfield co-founder John Saunders just fine.Betty Klimenko. I was plastered. But others wonder whether being the first woman to solely own a team worked against her. Catching his eye, Klimenko smiles and says: "You're a funny little bunny, aren't you?
"We need more Bettys.

In here, at a row of computers along one wall, four engineers study data transmitted from the two Erebus cars. Courtesy of Betty Klimenko Klimenko met Daniel in a pub in 1989. "I'm a different person," she says. "We had a better relationship afterwards. Whether it's a kid needing a teddy bear or Sydney children's hospital needing a new wing built, she actually doesn't have it in her to say no.
"Betty with John Saunders in Lane Cove National Park in 1960.Klimenko's house is an exuberant blend of architectural influences and decorating styles. "Eta and John Saunders at the opening of the Burwood shopping centre in the mid-1960s. The team is owned by Betty Klimenko and is based in Melbourne.The team launched as a GT … The family Monica Saunders-Weinberg tells me she has long admired Klimenko's independence of spirit: "She's always known what she's wanted, and no matter the hurdles, she goes and gets it." "About the racing, though, Klimenko could not be more serious. She worked for her father's company and came to believe that Saunders respected her for having stood her ground. It is hot, it is dusty, it's noisy as hell, but Klimenko greets me with a spring in her step and a gleam of excitement in her eye. If only more of them were female, laments Eugene Arocca, whose Confederation of Australian Motor Sport has just launched a program, Dare to be Different, designed to encourage young women to consider careers in motor racing, whether on the track or in the technical and mechanical support crews. And then reality bites." The investigator led Klimenko to a cousin, who claimed Betty had been conceived in a police cell in Kings Cross police station, and that her biological father was the arresting officer.Klimenko accepts that this is the truth. I relay this to Saunders-Weinberg, who agrees with a laugh that their relationship is good. "In the Erebus camp, there is optimism about the season ahead. He has dark hair, high cheekbones and a profile straight off a Roman coin. A stool is upholstered in what appears to be the fleece of a long-haired sheep. she says. The room where Klimenko and I talk has a sweeping view of Sydney Harbour but I am distracted by the almost full-size replica of a brown bear crouched beside my chair. In Sydney, he opened a hole-in-the-wall delicatessen in the Town Hall railway station underpass. "She committed suicide," says Klimenko, who was then 10.From the beginning, Saunders was a frequently absent parent – the burgeoning Westfield business took almost all his time – but in his grief over losing Eta, he withdrew still further from family life.

"We're proving to people that we're a proper race team and we can mix it with the best of them," says David Reynolds, who earlier in March finished second at the first Supercars meet of the year. Eugene Arocca congratulated her afterwards.

"It's easy for someone with wealth to get into a bit of trouble with the wrong management," Ryan says. And honest: "Betty isn't scared to say, 'I was the f…ing princess till you came.'

Each year at Bathurst, she puts on a tutu and spends a couple of hours whooping it up in the rowdiest section of the crowd. "Among fans of the sport, Klimenko has always been popular. "I run the business like it's my business, and make decisions like it was my arse that was on the line. The Bathurst triumph and her team's impressive recent results in other races have only sharpened her resolve, and the Erebus garage hums with the controlled intensity of a war room on this preseason test day in mid-February. Klimenko says Saunders told her this story not long before he died in 1997, leaving her keenly aware that her good fortune had come at another child's expense. She is wearing torn blue jeans and a lot of jewellery: four diamond studs in one ear, two in the other, a whopping ring, a glittering jangle of bracelets. It is hard to argue with this, especially when I notice the skull on the side table.

As we drink coffee in her upstairs living room, she says her husband, Daniel Klimenko, likes to tell her, "Sweetheart, you live in an area where they think V8 is a vegetable juice." But it is equally clear she is a formidable operator. At home in Vaucluse, one of the ritziest of Sydney's expensive eastern suburbs, she is conscious that her style and interests set her apart from most of her neighbours.