"Realistically, we could have started out the year with five straight wins." – Dean Carter

When Dean Carter won his first Comp national championship last season, he did it in a dramatic, nail-biting finish, capping a late-season points rally with a tension-filled, winner-take-all final-round victory at the second to last event of the season. In an almost inverse scenario this year, Carter scored more than half of his points in his first six outings of the season and was the first Lucas Oil champion to lock up his crown in 2004.

Carter's back-to-back championships mark only the second time that this feat has been accomplished, following exactly 20 years after Coleman Roddy won titles in 1983 and 1984, and Carter definitely credited his fast start for his success this season.

"That went exactly as we had hoped it would," he said. "We spent a lot of time after last season reworking our combination and in preseason testing, hoping for a fast start that would allow us to run the races we wanted to very carefully from that point on instead of chasing someone else. It sure made the end of the season more relaxing."

Over the winter, Carter and the engine-building team from Eaton Enterprises experimented with a lot of new parts that came their way as either part of ongoing relationships or the interest that new companies found in being aligned with a championship-winning team.

"We got a new piston design from JE, a new three-inch Kinsler injector, Jesel provided us with its new Mohawk rocker-arm design, Bullet Cams gave us a new-style cam, Victory 1 Titanium Valves gave us a new-style tapered valve stem, and Bud Harper and ESP Induction redid our cylinder heads," said Carter. "All of that helped, and we spent some time refining it all to work with our car."

Carter jumped out to a points lead that he would never relinquish at the season-opening K&N Filters Winternationals and chased that the following weekend with a runner-up at the Checker Schuck's Kragen NHRA Nationals in his homestate of Arizona to accumulate 169 points before the season was a month old.

Two weeks later, he was in the winner's circle in Arizona again after winning the Division 7 Lucas Oil Drag Racing Series event at Southwestern Int'l Raceway in Tucson, and he could have added the LODRS race at Firebird Int'l Raceway the week earlier had an ignition failure not stopped him early after displaying clear dominance in qualifying.

After the ignition bug bit again at the NHRA SummitRacing.com Nationals, the team traced the problem to a weak coil wire and installed a new MSD ignition system to eradicate the problem.

"Realistically, we could have started out the year with five straight wins," said Carter. "We went to [the Division 6 LODRS event in Boise, Idaho] two weeks later and won that race."

For all intents and purposes, Carter put the title away with two performances at mile-high Bandimere Speedway, where he won the Division 5 LODRS event and the Mopar Mile-High NHRA Nationals a month later, his second national event win of the season.

"We had planned to go to the nationals there all along, but we didn't know anything about running at altitude that high, so we decided to go to the points race, too," he said. "We got a different converter from A-1 and a little different fuel-nozzle system from Kinsler, and somehow we won the race. The car went faster every time we leaned it out, but we couldn't lean it out fast enough. We got home, looked at all of our data, and realized what we needed to do. We went back to the national event there and won the race."

Carter added a semifinal finish at the Division 5 event at Heartland Park Topeka to reach his final total.

"We had the title pretty much wrapped up, but there were still a few long shots, like Larry Pritchett, Michael Johnson, and Tony Stephenson, but they would have had to win everything from then on to do it, so we felt pretty good," said Carter. "We would have liked to have finished with another win - I began the season aiming for the 680-point area - but it turned out okay. Once we realized that those guys couldn't catch us, we started testing things for next year, doing a little experimenting."

Carter didn't reach a late round the rest of the season, but he hopes he banked enough good intel for a shot at a three-peat next year. He'll have Lucas Oil Products as a title sponsor and will utilize a second car, a four-cylinder H/EA roadster, to run at cooler tracks where his narrow-tire dragster can't hook up.

"I'd like to thank everyone who helped us win the championship again: Craig Eaton and Rick Watters at Eaton Enterprises, my parents Ray and Carol, my wife Michele and children Kevin and Tiffaney, Jim Plummer, Jeff Bellimer, Brian Neu, and Justin Martin," said Carter, "as well as Goodyear, Crower, Jesel, Manley, JE Pistons, MGP, Victory 1 Titanium Valves, Kinsler, ESP Induction, MSD, Rossler, Dart Engine Blocks, Bullet Racing Cams, Moroso, Desert Design Sportswear, Desert Sports Center, Impact Racing Helmets, and RacePak."

Carter's 2004 Track Record (652 points)
K&N Filters Winternationals	Won event
Checker Schuck's Kragen NHRA Nationals	Runner-up
Southwestern Int'l Raceway (Div. 7)	Won event
Firebird Raceway (Div. 6)	Won event
Famoso Raceway (Div. 7)	Semifinals
Bandimere Speedway (Div. 5)	Won event
Mopar Mile-High NHRA Nationals	Won event
Heartland Park Topeka (Div. 5)	Semifinals