Chris Eggleston is on Fan4Racing Radio, Monday, June 12, 2017 at 8:40 pm ET. Photo – Bart Young/Getty Images
Chris Eggleston is our guest on Fan4Racing NASCAR & Race Talk, Monday, June 12, 2017 at 8:40 pm ET. Call 929-477-1790 or tweet @Fan4RacingSite or @Sal_Sigala with any questions or comments during our LIVE broadcast.
The NASCAR K&N Pro Series West title competition is heating up with Chris Eggleston celebrating his third victory of the season and his second-straight series win in the NAPA/Toyota 150 at his home track of Colorado National Speedway on Saturday night. It was also the second-consecutive race for Eggleston – a native of Erie, Colorado – to take the pole and lead the field to the green flag.
“I didn’t feel like we had the winning race car there in the early goings,” Eggleston said in Victory Lane. “The No. 16 (Todd Gilliland) kinda got out front, checked out, and was holding a pretty good race pace a little bit. I did everything I could to keep up with him without abusing the tires. And our car wasn’t really good firing off on short run speed, but it really had a lot of long run speed.”
This victory is Eggleston’s eighth career win in the NASCAR K&N Pro Series West.
Eggleston in the No. 99 led the way to a one-two-three sweep for Bill McAnally Racing with rookie Derek Kraus finishing second and Todd Gilliland finishing third.
“Once we checked out and got single file, I didn’t think there was going to be that much grip on the top in (turns) one and two,” said Eggleston, who pulled away for a win by .767 seconds following a retart with 14 to go. “It’s just predominantly lost grip the last couple years, and we kind of tested the waters out there midway through the race. I thought we found some speed, and it helped me conserve tires more than anything running up there and it kind of saved us.
“Hats off to everybody at Bill McAnally Racing, NAPA Auto Parts; three wins in s season, that’s the best we’ve ever done and we’re just hopefully going to build on that and keep chipping away on that 16’s lead.”
Ironically, it was Eggleston finishing third in 2015 when he went on to the win the series title.
Last year’s champion Gilliland and Eggleston have won every race this season. In addition to winning the last two races, Eggleston also won the season opener. Gilliland went on to four consecutive victories and is the points leader by just seven points over second-place Eggleston.
Earlier in the day, Eggleston was fastest in both practice sessions, then earned his third career Coors Light Pole. In the race, Eggleston took the lead from Gilliland, who led a race-high 85 laps, with a pass on the outside on lap 100. He then had to hold off several challenges on restarts from his BMR teammates, Kraus and Gilliland. Eggleston led 64 laps on his way to the victory.
Gracin Raz finished fourth, with the rookie Kody Vanderwal finishing fifth.
Julia Landauer, Ron Norman, Michael Self, rookie Will Rodgers and Todd Souza round out the top-ten.
The NAPA/Toyota 150 will air on NBCSN this Thursday, June 15th at 7 pm ET.
The K&N Pro Series West has a weekend off before heading to the road course, with the Carneros 200 at Sonoma Raceway on June 24th.