COLFAX, Calif. — Colby and Jenny Wiesz have built their own family racing group as the first three of four children became racers.
The youngest is waiting to reach age 16 to make it four-for-four. When asked how racing has impacted her family, Jenny credited the sport with helping to keep it together.
Jenny explained, “I wouldn’t give all the credit to the races, but decisions we made early on to do everything as a family as much as possible. But the racing definitely gave us the opportunity to put into practice what we said we were going to do. It gave us regular opportunities to go together and to be together.
“The kids learned to make long hauls, to take vacations at the race track, and definitely helped us to be more patient and they just developed a love for it. They look forward to racing, they are in the shop several nights a week and racing is where they spend their money and time, and they just love it. It definitely kept us together as a family.”
The family is not all racing as Jenny likes to garden and work around the house. Colby has coached all the kids’ soccer teams and family trips of a non-racing variety are also part of their busy schedule.
Jenny met Colby when her family moved to Colfax. She was 13 and Colby almost 16 when they met in church. That was also the year Colby started racing sprint cars at Grass Valley. Not surprisingly, racing played a part in their eventual marriage.
“He proposed to me in December of 1997,” Jenny recalled, “and he gave me two dates for 1998, two dates that we could be married. It was either the very first weekend he wasn’t racing in November or there was one race he was willing to miss in July.”
Over time Jenny became a race fan and not just when someone from her family was on the track. Two sons are very active, a daughter races when she is available to do so, and the younger daughter says she wants to race when 16. Ben is the oldest at 22, Josh is 19, Hailey is 16 and Natalie is 12.
Dwarf cars have been the family starting point and Ben began driving one at age 13. He drove around the track for what seemed a long time before eventually becoming a contender for wins. As his mother said, “for two years he was last in everything.”
Ben has now collected 15 wins at six tracks, with Placerville Speedway being the site of six of those trophies.
Ben built his midget and gets to race that only occasionally and is taking his time learning it just as he did in the dwarf car. Josh won two races at the Dwarf Car Nationals in Medford, Ore., and a third win at the Stockton Dirt Track in California.
Ben is now spending some time in a sprint car and the family often goes to tracks that are running both 360 sprints and dwarf cars.
The Wiesz family owns three dwarf cars, two sprints cars and Ben’s midget, which completely fill two garages on the property in Colfax. Consider the large hauler and the investment is massive. With not much in sponsorship money, Wiesz Family Racing is mostly funded by Colby’s side business.
Jenny said, “Colby builds motors for people, all kinds of boat motors, car motors, he builds motors for some of his competitors, and he worked under Tony Borello for a long time, and nights, weekends, when they are not racing somewhere, he is building a motor for somebody.”
Jenny summarized racing and her family by saying, “It has brought so much value to our family and I hope it does the same for each of our kids. I hope they have some of the same benefits we have.”
Colby Wiesz has approximately 80 sprint car wins, 59 of which came at Marysville Raceway Park, making him the all-time winningest driver at that track.