We’ve spent the last decade focusing on the reliability required to build successful endurance race cars. That experience has given us a wealth of knowledge that other shops just can’t match. Whether it comes to the ideal suspension design on a modified street car or the build of a competition engine, we know where the pitfalls are and where less experienced shops can drop the ball.
Our dedication to perfection is what sets us apart from our competition both on the track and in our shop. We take the same pride in our customers cars as we do in our own. Our years of custom design and engineering experience make us the only choice for the racer or hobbyist seeking expert guidance and support in developing their own race/track car or just maintaining their beloved daily driver.
While our name says we’re a race shop, the fact is, that we work on more street cars than race cars. Fortunately for our customers, we take our endurance racing mindset to work with us when we maintain your vehicle, and that makes us very different. We’ve worked hard to become one of the top BMW and Porsche repair and service centers in Orange County. We utilize a small group of people who are each experts in their field to help us maintain our customers road cars.
Our customers are enthusiasts and often times will wait with their car while we work, and we encourage that. We’ve found that customers appreciate seeing our attention to detail first hand, and we have no secrets about the way we work. While other shops may force you to drop off your car or go sit in their waiting room while your car is fixed, we give you the option to watch us work. For that reason we’ve become the go to shop in Orange County for enthusiast owners and quite often the DIY mechanic who just doesn’t have the special tools to do what we can.
While we pride ourselves on being meticulous, we also focus on meeting the high demands of our customers at a price that is reasonable. Racing always breads an economic mindset that we take with us when we do maintenance on our customers cars, the amount of money our expertise can save our customers is what keeps them coming back.
Most independent shops and dealerships pay their technicians on a flat-rate basis. The technician earns more by finishing a job faster than the quoted time and less if they take longer. That structure quietly creates an incentive to rush, cut corners, or push add-ons that help beat the clock.
We’ve deliberately chosen a different path. Every technician at Lang Racing Development is paid on salary. There’s no bonus for finishing under the quoted time, no penalty for taking the time a job actually requires, and no reason to push work that doesn’t need to be done. Our techs are paid to do the job right — and that’s it. We think that single difference, more than anything else, shapes the experience customers have at our shop.
Ken has more than twenty years in the car business and has seen it from every side — car sales, service writer, dealership service manager, and service marketing. All of that now points at one job: being the front line at both shops. He answers the phone, books the work, orders the parts and arranges customer pickups and drop-offs — and when an engine build needs a component at an outside machine shop, he is often the one driving it there. When things are quiet he is renovating the office or keeping the place looking sharp. He is a genuine master of multitasking, and he is the glue that holds Lang Racing and Pinnacle together.
Thang is our resident BMW expert and has spent most of his life in the BMW world — more than 35 years of it, much at a renowned shop in Gardena. His diagnostic skills are second to none; he’ll often pinpoint the fault before you’ve finished describing the symptom. What customers remember, though, is how he treats them. Thang looks at the whole car rather than the one complaint, and he’ll tell you honestly what needs doing now and what can wait — staggering the work so it fits your wallet instead of emptying it in one visit. He is here to make your life easier, and he treats people like family.
Gabe joined us as a high school auto shop intern — and became one of the best hires we’ve ever made. Trained in our shop by a Cosworth engine builder, he now leads our engine program: every journal measured, every clearance recorded and verified before a single part goes together. He’s built software automation around our measuring tools and organized the entire engine room to his own exacting standard — a level of meticulousness that has raised the bar for everyone here. When he’s not at the measuring bench, he’s pursuing an engineering degree at Cal Poly Pomona. The purpose built engines our customers race and drive every day cross his bench first.
Sunny is a highly experienced mechanical engineer, and he came to us from a classic Porsche background. He works alongside Gabe in the engine room and brought a meticulous eye for detail and for process with him — he has taken up what Gabe started and keeps refining how we build engines: measured, recorded, repeatable, and a little better every time. When he steps out onto the shop floor to help, that same standard comes with him.
Austin is an ASE A8 certified technician who came to us from a European performance shop in Irvine, where he worked on BMW, Porsche, Audi, Mercedes-Benz and Lamborghini. He has spent seven years specialising in BMW — E, F and G chassis, and the N54, N55, N57, B58, S55 and S65 engines. Diagnostics and wiring are his strongest ground: ISTA+, E-Sys, PIWIS and Autel, CAN bus faults, OEM programming and coding, engine and chassis harness repair, and custom wiring. He also arrived already experienced in S55 crank hub installations and S65 rod bearing replacement — two of the jobs we are best known for. A 2018 Universal Technical Institute graduate, he is also EPA 609 certified, does pre- and post-tune data logging and calibration analysis, and has five cars of his own at home.
