Betty Kilmenko has fired a shot at newly crowned Supercars champion Shane van Gisbergen claiming he is sexist but the truth is much more easily explained.
The Erebus Motorsport owner has fired up at the New Zealander after he recently explained his controversial decision to walk away from Stone Brothers Racing just as the team was being sold to Klimenko and being re-branded to Erebus.
Van Gisbergen did walk away from a contract and the circumstances around his retirement from the sport were murky especially when he turned up at round one the following season driving for a rival team. He announced his retirement from the sport at the end of 2012 and headed back to New Zealand without a drive. At some point an opportunity to drive with Tekno Autosports came up and he agreed to a deal that kept him with the Queensland outfit for 2013-16. Just when he first discussed the Tekno move is unclear and, after some legal threats, a settlement was reached out of court that allowed van Gisbergen to drive for the Holden team.
Klimenko certainly had reason to criticize the 27-year-old but claiming his refusal to drive for Erebus was that "he didn't want to drive for a female" doesn't stack up.
The reality is that van Gisbergen's career was on the up and he could see a progression to being a regular race winner and even championship contender if he remained in a competitive team. But with Klimenko taking over and swapping from the Fords that Stone Brothers had run to Mercedes meant starting a project from scratch and that wouldn't have worked with van Gisbergen's career on the rise.
