A Look Into what drives Miss Renegade and her 7-Second Ford Mustang

They say diamonds are a girl’s best friend, but for Miss Renegade herself, the key to a racing girl’s heart is the ambiance set by tire smoke and race fuel at any given NMRA race. One word can be used to describe Val Clements’ career in drag racing—perseverance. After overwhelming difficulties that included her not even qualifying for the first NMRA race of the year in 2015, her efforts were met with discouragement but Val pushed forward with the help of her family of racers. Because of her fierce level of dedication to the sport of drag racing, this Clemson graduate is currently pursuing her master’s degree in automotive engineering to broaden her understanding of how every piece of the car functions, and why it works.

Enter the 2016 racing season. Coming into the first race of the year, Val’s best ET was 8.30 at 175 in a class where 8.0s is the norm. She was anticipating a competitive year after retiring a body-in-white 2014 Mustang chassis, sponsored by Watson Racing and going back to a chassis she raced previously.

Along with returning to her previous race-ready Renegade chassis, a 2005 Mustang, Val opted to trade her modular dual-overhead cam (DOHC) setup for a pushrod 360cid small-block Ford built by Team Clements, but mostly Val’s dad, Alton Sr. Force-feeding the pushrod powerhouse is a front-mount air-to-water intercooled Procharger F1A-94 supercharged. Worthy of mentioning are the custom fabricated headers built by Ed Rice and Val herself.

This year was very different because Val would delve into tuning the car herself with a new Big Stuff 3 stand-alone EFI system. You read that right—she not only builds her own headers, she also tunes her own Renegade car.

The 2016 season started out rocky to say the least. Val was met with massive discouragement as a result of not qualifying for the first NMRA race of the year in Bradenton, Florida due to an issue with the cylinder heads, forcing her to park it for the weekend. From Bradenton to Atlanta, big changes came to boost her confidence, though. Despite losing in the first round, she set a new personal best ET of 7.86.

Fast forward to Maple Grove NMRA in May 2016, and Val decided to take over the tuning duties of the engine. After trial and error tweaking the stand-alone system and struggling to get off the line cleanly, she found the power she was looking for, and again set a new personal best of 7.70. Still, she knew there was more and wanted to continue chipping away at the numbers. She pressed on race after race, never backing down from the goals she set in learn to dial in the Big Stuff3 EFI and the chassis. The struggles continued when Team Clements faced issues with a broken anti-roll bar and wishbone, but Val still improved upon her ETs little by little.

The 2016 season ended without an event win, but Val was pleased with wrapping it up with a stunning new best of 7.49 at 182 mph! The amount of passion that goes into her race program is remarkable and the team behind her is not only family, but her competitors, which drives her winning spirit even harder and gives her an advantage, not readily available to many other racers. One thing Val says she needs to change immediately is the fact that the car brings the wheels up too high. And while wheelies are crowd-pleasing entertainment, she knows it’s not efficient.

When asked about Val’s long-term goals, she dropped a few hints about possibly exploring NHRA racing options in the future, but for now she truly loves radial drag racing, which is still well within her comfort zone. She draws inspiration from NHRA Top Fuel racer, Leah Pritchett, who shares a similar story. Val will graduate with her masters in automotive engineering in 2018 and plans to turn her passion into a career, no matter where she lands in the automotive industry. This is a woman who knows what she wants and is dedicated to success. We can’t wait to see what 2017 brings for Miss Renegade and her awesome team.

Photography by Wes Taylor