Naima Lang has won a lot of races at Evergreen Speedway in Monroe, Washington, through the years.
However, his victory Saturday night on the opening day of 2022 NASCAR Advance Auto Parts Weekly Series competition at the track holds a special place in his heart.
“I’ve won a lot of big races, but that one right there is probably one of the races that I actually really, really needed,” Lang told NASCAR.com. “Just for my wife, my family and my crew.”
Saturday’s 75-lap race was not the richest race he has ever won, nor was it the six-time Evergreen Speedway track champion’s most prestigious victory. So what made Lang’s trip to Victory Lane so special?
In order to answer that, we have to start on Oct. 3, 2021, when Lang’s life and racing career flashed before his eyes.
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Competing in the Fall Classic at Tri-City Raceway at RMEC in West Richland, Washington, the 52-year-old veteran racer was involved in a violent crash that destroyed his race car and left him seriously injured.
“I haven’t watched any film, and I haven’t seen any pictures,” Lang said when recalling the crash. “I think there were tires issues. They were losing grip. It was a pretty abrasive race track. Three laps before the wreck I came on the radio I told them, ‘I’ve got no control over this race car. This thing is sliding everywhere.’
“Next thing I know I went into the corner, I tagged a lap guy and that sent me straight up into the wall. Where they had the wall was kind of way off the race track so there was a lot of time there before I hit the wall. I don’t remember very much after that. I remember all the pain I was in.”
Lang had to be extricated from his car due to the injuries he suffered, which included a compound fracture to his lower left leg as well as several bruised and cracked ribs. The injuries left him confined to a bed for several months while his body healed.
The driver from Snohomish, Washington, who also owns Lang Autosports in Lynnwood, Washington, admitted he thought his racing days were over.
“I was in a medical bed,” Lang recalled. “We rented one for the house. I was in that thing, and I couldn’t move, and I couldn’t get up. I thought for sure I would never get in a race car again. That was the last thing I thought of.
“I’m an active person. I don’t like sitting down for nothing. So it was really tough mentally for me to get through all that. Thankfully I’ve got close friends and my wife and family that helped me through it.”
As the days and weeks went by, Lang slowly began to recover. It took a few months, but eventually, Lang left the medical bed behind and started to return to his normal life.
Still, it took some time for him to decide if he was going to get back in a race car.
In the end, it was Lang’s desire to go out on his own terms that ultimately motivated him to return to racing after the crash.
“I had over Christmas and January to really think about it,” Lang said. “That’s all I do, just go out in my shop and work on race cars or cars in general. I didn’t want to quit under that circumstance. I wanted to quit on my own, retire on my own. I don’t want to have that and say that’s my last race. I’m too hardheaded.”
Once it was decided Lang was going to return to racing, he had to figure out what car he was going to drive. With his primary race car destroyed and sitting at a friend’s shop, Lang found himself in need of a car to drive.
Luckily there was a car available; the car normally driven by his son, Tyson, the 2020 Evergreen Speedway NASCAR Pro Late Model champion. Tyson Lang recently put his racing career on hold in order to focus on playing quarterback for the University of Washington.
“He put racing on hold until further notice,” Lang said. “That’s the car I’ve been running, which actually belongs to Ron Fritzley of J&R Truck Rentals. We had bought that car for him because he came up racing youth hornets and stuff.”
Lang was nervous before he got in his race car for the first practice of the day Saturday at Evergreen.
So nervous, in fact, that his hands were shaking.
“I was really timid in the first practice. I didn’t want to get anywhere near the wall. It took awhile to get back into my groove,” Lang said. “My hands were actually shaking before I got in for that first practice. It was all mental that I had to fight through.”
By the time the green flag waved for the 75-lap NASCAR Pro Late Model main event later that evening, Lang had mostly worked the nerves out of his system.
His goal entering the day was simply to find his groove again, get comfortable in the race car, be competitive and finish the race.
He ultimately exceeded his own expectations.
After starting seventh, Lang raced his way to the lead with 54 laps left. Contact with the second-place car of Dawson Cox cost him the lead with 42 laps remaining, but Lang later regained the lead during a restart with 30 laps left and held on to win the race.
“I didn’t think I was ever going to race again,” Lang said. “To have that win, it just brought a lot of emotions to the top. It was a surreal moment to actually win the race.
“We couldn’t have finished in any better way.”
Lang plans to continue racing at Evergreen, where he is the defending NASCAR Pro Late Model track champion, as long as he’s having fun. He’ll quit when he is ready, and he’ll do it on his own terms.
“I have no real plans. As long as we’re still having fun, we’ll go racing,” Lang said.
