EXTREME 10.5

A red-light start by Bill Glidden handed the Extreme 10.5 win to Spiro Pappas, who posted an off-the-pace 4.18 pass at 148.31 mph in the final due to the turbocharger on his 2009 Pontiac GXP malfunctioning. But the final round win wasn’t really a true picture of the absolute dominating performance put on by the veteran 10.5 racer from Chicago. In the semi-finals against Chuck Ulsch, Pappas went 3.99 seconds at 190.11 to both beat Ulsch and join him as the second member of the exclusive Mickey Thompson Tires 3-Second Club for ADRL Extreme 10.5 drivers.

The semi-final between Ulsch and Pappas was a classic. Ulsch had run two straight sub-four-second passes and Pappas’s average reaction time for the two rounds previous to the semi-finals was a .001.

“That was a big deal for us, to get that three-second run over with. I wish we could’ve been first, but it still feels good to know we did it,” the popular Chicago racer said. “I also wish we could’ve had a good race in the final, but it doesn’t make the win over Billy any less enjoyable. This is what we came here for.”

Glidden (far lane, above) later explained he suffered a clutch controller failure on the line, causing him to go red.

“After the burnouts I looked over and could see he was smoking pretty bad out the left side of his car, so I knew he was hurt. So I wasn’t pushing the tree or anything. I was just going to do my regular deal when this happened,” Glidden said, referring to the faulty controller. “It makes me sick, if you want to know the truth.”