/ AP

Matt Kenseth, center, is congratulated by teammates after winning the rain-shortened Daytona 500 on Sunday.

But he’s back top again, and gave team owner Jack Roush his first Daytona 500 victory in the process.

“I tell you what, after last year, winning a race means a lot to me,” Kenseth said. “I’ve had a lot of great opportunities in my life — from my family getting me in racing and really ... all the sponsors that we have that have stuck by us and made this happen in an up-and-down economy.

“Man, I don’t know. Winning the Daytona 500 is definitely a dream moment. It’s just an unbelievable feeling.”

Harvick, who used a push from Kenseth to win the 500 in 2007, finished second and said Kenseth would be a popular winner among his competitors.

“I think Matt’s obviously a pretty standup person and a great race car driver,” Harvick said. “I think he’s one of those guys that he can win seven or eight races in a year and never receive any credit. He’s a really good race car driver. He’s a champion, Daytona 500 champion.”

AJ Allmendinger, who had to race his way into the field in one of Thursday’s qualifiers, finished third.

Clint Bowyer was fourth, and Sadler was fifth, devastated he lost the lead moments before the rain stopped the race. He led 24 laps and was out front during an earlier caution, hoping the sky would open up at that moment to give him the win.

“That’s just my luck,” he radioed his crew. “It’s raining on the radar and not on the track. Welcome to the team.”

Sadler nearly lost his job in December, when team management decided to replace him with Allmendinger. He filed an injunction to stop the move, and the team changed its mind after merging with Petty Enterprises in early January.

A chance to win the 500 would have been sweet redemption for Sadler, who instead was left wondering what he did wrong.

“I put my heart and soul to come in here to Daytona, Speedweeks, try to compete at the top of my game, ’cause I knew I had a lot of eyes on me to run good,” he said. “It would have been cool to finish like that, but just wasn’t meant to be. Very hard to swallow. Very emotional.”

David Ragan was sixth and was followed by Michael Waltrip, Tony Stewart, Reed Sorenson and Kurt Busch.

Pole-sitter Martin Truex Jr. was 11th. Defending race winner Ryan Newman was 36th. Joey Logano, who at 18 was the youngest starter in race history, finished 43rd.

The racing picked up much earlier than usual, as most everyone knew it was really a race against the rain.

So it was no surprise when Dale Earnhardt Jr., frustrated by two pit-road mistakes that had dropped him a lap down, aggressively raced Brian Vickers for position on a restart just past the halfway mark.

Vickers blocked an attempted pass by pushing Earnhardt down below the yellow out-of-bounds line. When Earnhardt re-entered the racing surface, he clipped the left-rear corner of Vickers’ car to trigger a nine-car accident.

“My goal is to keep Junior behind me,” Vickers said. “I went to block him. I beat him to the yellow line and then he just turned us. To wreck somebody intentionally like that in front of the entire field is really kind of dangerous. That’s my problem with it.”

The accident knocked out Kyle Busch, who had led a race-high 88 laps and figured he was in position for the win.

“Some guys having some bad days and not doing their best out there, just made their bad day our bad day,” Busch said. “It’s just a shame. It’s just unfortunate that two guys got together that were a lap down that were fighting over nothing.”

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