ABC Raceway
Red Clay Classic cements Wisconsinite's breakout
By Todd Turner
DirtonDirt.com managing editor
Kevin Eder in victory lane at ABC Raceway. (shooterguyphotos.com)
Kevin Eder’s best-ever Late Model season, and best-ever stretch in the division, couldn’t have come at a better time.
ABC Raceway in his native Ashland, Wis., posted a race-record $15,000 first-place purse for this season's 50th anniversary of the Red Clay Classic, and the 36-year-old Eder came into ABC’s marquee event a winner in three of his previous six starts, including his first two Structural Buildings WISSOTA Challenge Series victories. | RaceWire
“If I could win one race,” Eder said, “it would have been that one. Hands down.”
A winner of 33 non-Late Model events at ABC Raceway heading into the Red Clay Classic, Eder got the job done Sept. 27 for the richest victory of his career, leading the final 43 of 50 laps to pocket more than $16,500 in purse and bonus money.
The victory marked his fourth in seven starts as his sparkling 2025 season doubled his career victory total to eight since moving into the Late Model division seven seasons ago.
“We've always had streaks of speed, but I've never really put something like this together. I mean anything like this at all,” said Eder, who now lives in Cameron, Wis. “I mean, not many have, I guess, in the grand scheme of things.”
Reaching these lofty heights didn’t come easy for the driver of the No. 22 in his 22nd season of racing. He’d been successful in pure stocks, super stocks and modifieds, but when Eder shifted into Late Models in 2019, he went winless nearly three years. And even after that first victory in June 2022 at Red Cedar Speedway in Menomonie, Wis., he sprinkled in just a few more checkered flags over the next few seasons.
What spurred him to his greatest success?
“Years of pain and suffering,” Eder said without hesitation. “If you struggle that long or have streaks of up and down. ... I mean we were a really good mod driver and had a bunch of success in other divisions, but it's like, man, ‘Maybe this Late Model thing ain't for me, or maybe it's over my head.’ ”
While Eder didn’t come from a dirt racing family, the clan had its share of “motorheads,” and as kid Eder found himself hanging out at ABC Raceway, where his racing career would soon get rolling.
“I started out as a fan, at age 12, selling popcorn and glo-sticks with my buddy under the announcer's tower,” Eder recalled. “And then they came out with pure stocks that year. And they looked like they were literally crawling around the track and I told my buddy, ‘There's no way I can't do this.’ And my dad bought me a car. It was like $2,900. And the first time I ever raced, I think the first lap I spun out like three times on the back straightaway and realized I was in a world of trouble. But it literally was just on a whim.”
Soon enough Eder got a handle on things, winning in the pure stock, graduating to a successful run in super stocks and then finding his share of checkered flags in the modified division into the 2019 season. At that time he was courting wife-to-be Becca — who didn’t grow up in a racing family — and Eder thought he might leave racing behind.
“I kind of told her I was retiring when I met her,” Eder said. “I was hanging it up. I was in a modified at the time and I mean, not that we had won everything, but I mean it pretty much had ran its course in my life.”
But during the 2019 season, Eder got the chance to jump into Late Models in a Seubert Calf Ranches-backed car, and when he married Becca a few years later, he was still a racer and trying to make his way in the full-fender division.
Driving a Rocket Chassis that was nearly 15 years old, Eder didn’t win any races initially, but he had a few highlights. He led all but eight laps of 2019’s Silver 1000 at Proctor (Minn.) Speedway, and in 2020 he captured a World of Outlaws Real American Beer Late Model Series heat race in Superior, Wis., then ran second early in the feature before fading.
Eden eventually got a newer Rocket Chassis that carried him to his first victories, including a local triumph during 2022’s USA Nationals weekend at Cedar Lake Speedway in New Richmond, Wis.
After his son Russell was born in early 2023, Eder decided to mostly cut out weekly races, tightening his schedule to primarily WISSOTA Challenge events. He struggled to break through in the competitive events, posting just five top-five finishes between the 2023-24 seasons. Frustration was setting in.
“You're learning something new and then, as you're doing it, you're like, 'Is it me? Is it the motor? Is it the car?” said Eder, who owns and operates Elite Epoxy floor refinishing. “It was pretty much get it done this year or go buy a boat.”
Longtime motorsports sponsor Mike Seubert, whose Seubert Calf Ranches has supported the West Virginia-based Rocket Chassis house car team for a generation, often prefers his drivers stick with Rockets. But he gave Eder his blessing in 2025 to switch to an MB Customs Race Car from the Menomonie, Wis.-based Mars Race Cars operation of Hall of Fame driver Jimmy Mars and his crew chief-brother Chris Mars.
Eder spent the first half of the season adjusting to the MB Customs ride, getting more comfortable in early August when he posted a third-place finish during Cedar Lake’s USA Nationals weekend.
Eder started getting "a little more comfortable in this new car, and one corner at a time just kind of made it our own. We've been fast all year, I just needed to get the dang thing turning and comfortable the way I like it,” he added. “It just so happened to finally turn around. After 15 shows in the car, you know exactly what you wanna change when and you can be a little more consistent in that regard.
“It kind of really turned around for us. I guess we started getting really quick at USA Nationals and then we had a couple weeks off before invitational season and then it's been all checkered flags from there.”
He’s appreciative for Seubert’s support over his Late Model career.
"I'm more than thankful for Mike sticking with me over the last six years of spotty success,” Eder said. “To finally get to this point, he could have rug-pulled me four years ago for lack of performance.”
Eder said the team has “slowly, slowly, slowly built into a really good program, a new MB Customs this year, and we have really good engines from Adams Automotive in Cameron and just everything kind of has — it's taken six years to get it right — but I mean everything is right.”
Eder is grateful to an array of other supporters, including his lone crew member, 81-year-old Mark Howe. Former standout modified racers Jay McDonald and Tony Bahr have been instrumental, along with veteran team owner J.R. Haley and Mark Gerth of CMD Shocks. Veteran WoO racer Brent Larson provided shop space to Eder for three years and the Mars brothers, along with employee A.J. Diemel, have provided support.
He’s also grateful that Becca, expecting their second child in January, has supported his racing (“she likes it since I love it”). He’ll tentatively plan to run the WISSOTA Challenge Series in 2026, but that depends on what happens with “the second kid coming into the equation,” Eder said.
For now he’ll wrap up his season at Ogilvie (Minn.) Speedway’s Fall Classic while continuing to soak up the “amazing” Red Clay Classic victory. There wasn’t much passing in the second half of ABC’s feature, but Eder isn’t apologizing for winning his biggest race.
“Don't get me wrong, it, it took rubber with like 25-30 (laps) to go,” he said, “but I don't think it would have mattered.”
