Drag races might seem like a boys club but it won’t just be boys and their toys taking over Stamp Avenue this weekend.
“There’s lots of women that are in it this year,” said Annette Clement, one of the racers in this year’s Thunder in the Valley on Aug. 6-7.
“For the first years that I watched there were probably four or five that I paid attention to.”
But this year, Clement will be one of the women to watch in her 1967 Acadian as she goes for her fifth year at the races.
“There are about 15 of us this year, I’m guessing. I think you’ll find that the majority of them got into it because their husbands were driving. You get to have a run with your husband or with one of your friends and you go ‘why am I not doing this?’ And there’s absolutely no reason why you can’t. You just have to get a car.”
That’s what got Clement—who’s been watching the races since day one— hooked.
“My husband races so we’ve been attending and being part of the drag races since the very first year it started,” she said.
“Attending and being a spectator and sitting in the pits, watching my friends race… after volunteering, racing just seemed to be the next step.”
Clement had owned her car for 13 years when she started racing.
“That wasn’t the reason I purchased it—I just bought it because I really liked the car,” she said.
Years of watching the races and knowing that her Acadian could be running on the strip instead of sitting on the sidelines proved too much to bear for Clement.
“Being at the races all the time and knowing that’s one of the types of cars that run, it just seemed like the next natural step was to sign up and do it.”
That’s exactly how Tracey Anderson (pictured here) got her start last year.
“Rodney [her husband] has been with the drag races since the very beginning,” said Anderson.
The first year, Anderson stayed home with the kids but after that, she decided to come help out at the races.
“I was on the safety tracks and that was okay, but I wanted to be close to the action so I worked in the burnout box. Then after a couple years of working in there I decided that I wanted to do it,” said Anderson.
“I always asked Rodney for a racecar for Christmas. I think the first couple years he thought I was joking… but I wasn’t.”
Tracey never wanted anything fancy—just something she could race.
“And then he built that over there, which everybody notices.”
‘That over there’ is a gleaming silver 1971 Chevy Camaro.
Anderson will be running in the entry-level sportsman class again. But with the new distance, it will all just as new as it was last year.
“Last year was my first year and I was so nervous. Saturday was the rainout and I hadn’t slept a wink the night before so I was so exhausted that I actually slept really well on Saturday night,” Anderson said.
“When you’re up at the start line you’re so focused that you don’t even think of how scared you are. You just look at the light and just do it.”
With a different length and location, it will all be new again this year but Anderson is hooked for life.
“It was the biggest adrenalin rush of my life.”
The welcoming atmosphere has made it easy to keep going.
“When I first started out, I didn’t really know anything about it. But we have a lot of friends that race and then going to the races and we’d go to Mission sometimes… seeing how many women were racing got me into it,” she said.
“And the camaraderie. Last year, all the help I got from his friends giving me pointers. It’s just a big family. It’s pretty awesome.”
reporter@albernivalleynews.com
facebook.com/albernivalleynews
