Hot laps didn’t go well for Chandler May at Greenville Speedway in Mississippi. He lost the left-front wheel on his factory stock. It prompted track announcer Derrick Cotton to sing, “You picked a fine time to leave me, loose wheel,” by The Balgaard Brothers, a parody of Kenny Rogers’ “Lucille.”
May arrived to Greenville Speedway late. His home track, Jackson Motor Speedway in Mississippi, had canceled, so he hauled two hours to Greenville.
“I never been to Greenville Speedway before — this was only my fifth week in racing,” May, of Florence, Mississippi, said. “I had met Greenville Speedway promoter, Carl Kilgore, when I was at Whynot Motorsports Park [in Mississippi]. He is a nice guy. He invited me to come and check his track out, so this was the perfect opportunity to do that.”
In May’s haste to make it to the track, he made a mistake.
“I forgot to tighten my lug nuts,” said May. “I was doing really well in hot laps, and then all of a sudden the wheel came off.”
Fortunately, the wheel flew off the track and into a baseball field adjacent to the oval. No one was injured.
The incident didn’t damage May’s car either. He simply remounted the wheel, made sure to tighten the lug nuts, and went racing.
Chandler May has raced four tracks in Mississippi in the five weeks he’s sat behind the wheel of a race car. Those tracks include Greenville Speedway, Hattiesburg Speedway, Jackson Motor Speedway, and Whynot Motorsports Park.
Despite the rough start, he finished fifth at Greenville Speedway — his second-best finish. His best so far has been a second, which is not too shabby for a rookie.
“I sat in the stands at Jackson Motor Speedway, wondering what it would be like to drive a race car,” May said. “It looks easy when you are sitting in the stands. When you actually sit in a race car, you learn quickly that racing is a lot harder than you think it is.”
Mike Adaskaveg has written hundreds of stories since the website’s inception. This year marks his 54th year of covering auto racing. Adaskaveg got his start working for track photographer Lloyd Burnham at Connecticut’s Stafford Motor Speedway in 1970. Since then, he’s been a columnist, writer, and photographer, in racing and in mainstream media, for several outlets, including the Journal Inquirer, Boston Herald, Stock Car Racing, and Speedway Illustrated. Among Adaskaveg’s many awards are the 1992 Eastern Motorsport Press Association (EMPA) Ace Lane Photographer of the Year and the 2019 National Motorsports Press Association (NMPA) George Cunningham Writer of the Year.
