Motorsport: Eggleton hopes his luck will change at nationals

Daniel Eggleton in action at Vodafone Speedway Western Springs. Photo / James Selywn Photography

Auckland racer Daniel Eggleton is hoping some rule tweaks for Saturday night's National Sprint Car Championship at Vodafone Speedway Western Springs will change his luck.

Eggleton has shown glimpses of winning pace this year but has been taken out of feature races a couple of times while in a strong position.

One of the most challenging parts of a sprint car race is yellows bringing yellows - restarts bunching the pack together and then jostling for position creating more incidents.

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But the National Championship is governed by slightly different rules than what has been used all season at Western Springs.

"They will be running single-file restarts rather than double, which is a local track rule," Eggleton said.

"Lapped cars still stay in so if you have earned a few positions and got ahead of some lapped cars you are not disadvantaged with those lapped cars being taken out for a double file restart where you can get jumped by one row going quicker."

Eggleton has never won the National Championship but will be one of the stronger contenders although he admits luck will play a significant role in the night's outcome.

"It is hard because it is just a one-off event rather than perhaps how it should be - run over a series to find a true champion," Eggleton said.

"We have won the North Island title before and the GP title twice so it would be nice to get the New Zealand one.

"The car has been going pretty well - we started off well in the season but made a few changes more recently and they probably haven't worked as well as we'd have liked them to so we will probably just set the car back up as we did at the start.

"Realistically whoever wins the feature - bad luck aside - will come from the first two rows."

Eggleton thinks Michael Pickens will be the driver to beat.