Spiro Pappas expects excellence.

He reached his goal last year by taking home the coveted Flowmaster Extreme 10.5 world championship in his Jerry Bickel-built 2009 Pontiac GXP.

This season, Pappas has had his share of struggles, through four American Drag Racing League events he is third in the Extreme 10.5 point standings.

Pappas, however, is upbeat his fortunes will change Friday and Saturday at the ADRL Hardee’s Independence Drags IV at Heartland Park in Topeka, Kan.

Spiro Pappas expects excellence.

He reached his goal last year by taking home the coveted Flowmaster Extreme 10.5 world championship in his Jerry Bickel-built 2009 Pontiac GXP.

This season, Pappas has had his share of struggles, through four American Drag Racing League events he is third in the Extreme 10.5 point standings.

Pappas, however, is upbeat his fortunes will change Friday and Saturday at the ADRL Hardee’s Independence Drags IV at Heartland Park in Topeka, Kan.

“I’m really looking forward to being here after all the problems we’ve had the last few races, we need a good comeback,” said Pappas, who lost to points leader Gary White in the semifinals at the last ADRL event in Martin, Mich.

In his first qualifying attempt, Pappas lost traction right off the starting line at Topeka, but did rebound in his second qualifying run with a 4.14-second run at 184.72 mph.

Pappas says his combination in 2010 isn’t much different than a year ago,  however things obviously haven’t gone according to plan.

“The car is pretty much the same as it was last yar,” Pappas said. “We’ve just been having a few little weird problems. Our problems we had the last two races are unheard of, but believe it or not, it is the battery in the car. Although the voltage was good and it was able to crank the car, somehow the amps would run out and it would lose the tune-up in the car as your running down the track, and we’ve had nothing but problems and we finally figured that out.”

Pappas admitted tracing his car’s recent power woes wasn’t easy.

“Unfortunately, the computer data you get back from a race tells you the volts, but it doesn’t tell you the amps,” Pappas said. “Had we had known the amps were dropping tremendously as we were going down the track, we would have done something about it. We didn’t know about it because the car was starting and running. Finally, when we couldn’t start the car one time because the voltage was so low, and we added another battery to get it going. As soon as we added the second battery, the car idled probably 800 rpms higher, so we then realized we had a problem with the battery.”

Just when Pappas and his crew figured out the battery issue at Martin, Michigan, another gremlin bit his team.

“We were on a good run and one of the clips came out of the injector and we burned a piston,” Pappas said. “We came back around and took the piston out and it was also more powerful now because of the spark and the injector running correctly. We came back and put another piston in it and when we put the car back together we obviously didn’t clean it good enough. There was debris in the crank and it stuck a bearing and threw a rod. I’m confident in my team that we’ve found our problems. That’s the good thing. I’m finally glad that we are out here (at Topeka) and can concentrate on the conditions of the track and see what we can do.”

Despite his sub-par season so far, Pappas welcomes the challenge to perform.

“I need pressure to function, I thrive on it,” Pappas said. “It motivates me and keeps me going.”