DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. (AP) – Dale Jarrett is back out front.

Jarrett charged from 10th place in a seven-lap sprint Saturday night to win his third Budweiser Shootout, holding off favorite Dale Earnhardt Jr. after his good friend helped Jarrett get to the front on the last of the 70 laps.

It was a dramatic start for the 1999 NASCAR champion, coming off the worst season of his career.

“I don’t even want to talk about that now,” Jarrett said. “I’ve got to thank my buddy Dale Jr. He was knocking the devil out of the rear bumper and that’s probably what I needed to get up there.”

“The last two times we won this thing, we won the Daytona 500 and I’m really looking forward to next Sunday.”

Earnhardt, who won the made-for-TV race for the previous year’s pole winners and former Shootout champions a year ago, came up 0.157-seconds – about two car-lengths – short of doing it again.

“I was helping him and he was helping me and that’s how we got up there,” Earnhardt said. “I tried to beat him in that last lap, but I couldn’t catch him.”

The sprint race at the end was set up by a 13-minute, 40-second red flag stoppage brought out when Jeremy Mayfield and Dave Blaney, running 1-2 at the time, crashed coming off turn two on the 2-mile Daytona International Speedway oval.

Mayfield, who had taken only two tires on his last pit stop, slid up into Blaney and both cars slammed the concrete wall. Mayfield’s car did considerable damage to a metal gate in the wall and that prompted NASCAR to stop the race while repairs were made.

AP-ES-02-07-04 2225EST