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  The original rear-wheel-drive, mid-engined Fiat only had a 56kW 1290cc single overhead cam engine and weighed slightly over a tonne. Photo Gallery

When she's not tearing up the track in her Fiat X1/9 Abarth race car, accountant Kaylene Robertson can be found in the pits doing some knitting.

"Some of the other competitors think of me as a bit of a curiosity," she says. "At work I'm a boring accountant and it's like I have this second life." Kaylene and husband Chris of Mt Gravatt share the X1/9 and compete in sprints and hillclimbs.

"I guess Im just an adrenalin junkie," says Kaylene. "Racing makes you feel very much alive. You come back into the pits with a big smile on your face. That's what it's all about."

They bought the 1973 Fiat for $30,000 in 2007 to replace another Fiat race car. It's a replica of the famous Fiat rally Abarth Prototipo rally car and was built by Norm Singleton who raced it in two Targa Tasmania rallies.

The original rear-wheel-drive, mid-engined Fiat only had a 56kW 1290cc single overhead cam engine and weighed slightly over a tonne. This one is powered by a two-litre Lancia Abarth DOHC engine with twin 48mm downdraft Webbers, a transmission from a 1970s Lancia Beta and it's been stripped down to weigh just 820kg.

However, Chris explains that they race in the Mark II B Sports category against even lighter Westfields and kit cars. "But we give them a good run," he says. Kaylene adds: "It's very fast and you have to get to know the car as it has a habit of coming back to bite you if you get it wrong."

She decided to share her husband's passion because "it was something that we could do together. He was having such a fun time I thought I would do it too. I was always a bit of a Tom boy. Dad had motorbikes and while he wouldn't let me ride them he would pillion me around on them."

"I still go to work on the back of Chris's BMW (1991 R100RS)." She met Chris through her first car, a 1972 Mazda 1500 clunker with column shift which she bought for $750 in 1976. "It was always breaking down then and that's how I met Chris; he used to come and fix it," she explains.

"He kept finding things wrong with it so he could keep coming back to see me." Apart from the BMW motorcycle, their only other vehicle is a 2008 Mazda BT-50 3-litre diesel ute which they use to tow the race car.

Kaylene says most of the women who race are much younger than her, but despite coming into the racing game later in life, she is just as passionate. She boasts that she even raced the Noosa Hillclimb with a cracked bone in her foot. "I'm taking it very seriously," she says. Chris says Kaylene was originally hesitant about racing, but "now she really gets into it. I'm still faster, but she crashes less."

Their ambition is to drive together in the Classic Adelaide or Targa Tasmanian rallies and Kaylene would like to own a Maserati Trofeo GranSport "like (supermodel) Jodie Kidd races". "Something fast, mid-engined and red."