MAIN & ABOVE LEFT: Team
Bettes and their Juniors on
track at Willowbank in 1996
(main pic L-R): Kelly’s father
Steve, brother Scott, family
friend Damien, Kelly, and
mother Jenny. “Mum and Dadhave been involved 100 per
cent all the way throughout
my racing,” says Kelly. “Back
in the Junior days, Dad would
be on Scott’s car and so Mum
would help me – Mum would
fire me up and line me up anddo all that. She still comes to
all my races – there’s not many
that she’s missed over the
years”ABOVE MIDDLE & RIGHT:
Kelly has hit the big-timerunning. Since stepping into
the Lamattina Top Fuel car less
than a year ago, she has run
Australia’s quickest and fastest
licensing pass, the quickest-
ever 1000ft ET in Australia, and
bagged her first event winIN A TOP FUEL CAR, TO FEEL THAT INITIAL HIT AND THE PHYSICAL SPEED
Congratulations on your first Christmas
Tree. A year ago you hadn’t even driven
a Top Fuel car – seems like it’s been a
dream transition?
Getting my first Christmas Tree in Top Fuel was
unreal, and that’s only my third competitive
meeting. I’m such a competitive person that I
expect that I can win every time, but with me
being a new driver and the team finding their
way again with a new car that we got last May,
when you think about the timeframe that we’ve
done that in, it’s really quite incredible.
Have the Lamattina family told you why
they chose you to drive their car?
Phil [Lamattina] and the family obviously went
through a process of choosing a driver and
they had a couple of people in mind. Actually,
Richie Crampton was the last one to drive for
the team before me, and he was one person
who suggested me for the role, which is pretty
cool. So I guess Phil asked a few people, trying
to decide who would work best for the team
and what they wanted to achieve. Being able
to work well with the family was a big thing for
them. Obviously I had achieved some things
in the sport and they could see that I was
a focussed racer, and they looked at how I
conduct myself on social media and just day-
to-day. It was certainly a pretty big shock to get
the phone call from Phil.
Have you been shown due respect by
fellow racers?
Absolutely. There was a lot of respect out there
even just for the fact that I could get the car
from A to B in my licensing process. There’s
a lot of people excited for some fresh blood
in the Top Fuel category, and I think it gave
some incentive for some of the racers in thejunior classes that it’s not beyond impossible
to make it in one of these cars, even if you don’t
have the budget yourself. It probably restored
faith in some people’s minds that sometimes a
Sportsman racer can be recognised.
Did you play any other sports or have
other pastimes growing up?
I did ballet for a while, until a Junior Dragster
came into the family. My brother Scott raced
first and then he got another car, so it wasn’t
long before the opportunity arose that I could
step into the car that he’d been racing. At that
point I was like: ‘Okay, not that interested in
ballet anymore. I just want to go drag racing!’
Did you talk about racing with your
girlfriends at school, or was that a
separate world?
All my friends knew that I raced, but I was still
a girl that did girly things. I’m probably not asMAIN & ABOVE LEFT:TeTeTeTeeamamamamm
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