7/10/07
As a former commercial pilot, Steve Gorman was always used to going fast, but his off time was spent in the more leisurely pursuit of training hunting dogs. He eventually branched into training drug-sniffing and arson-detection dogs for law enforcement agencies, but his business really took off shortly after the 9/11 terrorist attacks when the call went out for bomb-detecting dogs.
Gorman’s Patriot Canine Services now provides dogs and handlers on a leased contract basis to the U.S. military in Afghanistan and Iraq and provides the inspiration for his War Dog Racing team in the ADRL’s new Extreme 10.5 class. And like his dogs, Gorman’s racecar is a battle-tested piece, a 2001 Pontiac Grand Am that previously served in the NHRA Pro Stock wars in the capable hands of former champion Jim Yates.
A self-described “neophyte,” Gorman started racing just three years ago with a ’78 Camaro that he made the test-n-tune scene with around the Dallas-Ft. Worth area. Always a car guy at heart (he had a 396 Chevelle SS as an 18 year-old), he initially planned to buy a hot rodded ’51 Merc, but his cousin, Randy Bess, who owns a couple of test-n-tune drag cars, told him, ‘No, don’t get that lead sled, get yourself some kind of racecar and we can have some fun together.’
Within a year, the need for more speed took hold and the Whitesboro, TX-based racer says he upgraded to a big-tire ’68 Camaro with a tube chassis and “a little 509 Reher & Morrison in it.” Still not running in competition at the time, Gorman says he stuck to the test-n-tune nights and was really just getting familiar with all that drag racing had to offer. “There are so many classes that I didn’t even know what I wanted to do,” he recalls. “That’s when I saw the Outlaw Top Sportsman thing and I thought that looked pretty fun.”
Gorman knew enough by then that the 509 just wouldn’t cut it in the Texas Outlaw Racing Association where Outlaw Top Sportsman ran on a 4.70 index. So in 2005, he commissioned Han Feustel in Ft. Worth to build a two-stage, nitrous-fed 632 cubic incher. “We put it in the ’68 Camaro and it just kind of overwhelmed that little car,” he says. “That’s when we decided we needed another car and I found this car that was Jim Yates Pro Stocker in 2001 when it had the Split-Fire sponsorship on Jerry Bickel’s Web site. In February (’06) I went to Bickel’s shop up in Missouri to see it.”
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