HAMPTON, Ga. -- Dale Jarrett decided to throw his own retirement party this weekend at Atlanta Motor Speedway.

Jarrett qualified third-fastest Friday night at 191.655 mph, his best starting spot since sharing the front row with then-teammate David Gilliland at Talladega more than a year ago. Now he hopes to finish it off by being competitive in Sunday's Pep Boys Auto 500, something that's been difficult for Jarrett to accomplish so far in 2007.

"Since I haven't finished better than 22nd this season, finishing better than that would make for a good Sunday," Jarrett said. "That's not a very lofty goal to sit here and talk about. But right now we have a good racecar so let's go take advantage of that.

"Let's run up front and enjoy it for awhile. I miss seeing those guys a lot other than when they lap me and that's not a very good sight. It would be great to run with them and I think I have a car capable of doing that."

Self-depreciating humor aside, Jarrett credits a brand-new car for some of the improvement, which is somewhat unusual, given that there are only three more races remaining for the current chassis.

"When they came to me and told me what they were doing, it really surprised me," Jarrett said. "But we've learned so much and we haven't really torn up much to have to build very many new cars.

"They felt like these last three races -- here, Texas and Homestead -- with this car, that this is something we could use. They felt like this was worth the effort to do that and they did a tremendous job. We're sitting 40-something in owner points, but it doesn't matter because we're still fighting and battling hard. We have to continue to improve and show that improvement -- that's our goal."

Jarrett was 29th-fastest in Saturday's Happy Hour with a lap of 184.874 mph, the final chance for the 43-car field to turn laps before Sunday's green flag. Kasey Kahne was quickest at 188.450 in cool, breezy conditions. Martin Truex Jr. turned the fastest lap of the day -- 190.313 -- in the first of Saturday's two practice sessions.

The only incident came when Clint Bowyer scraped the wall in the final practice but the damage wasn't expected to be significant enough to force the No. 07 team to pull out the backup.

To say this season has been a struggle would be overstating the obvious. As the veteran leader of a first-year organization, Jarrett quickly used up his quota of past champion's provisionals, then made just four of the next 11 races.

"I was probably a little ambitious in my speaking at the beginning of the year about what we would achieve and what we would be able to do by next year, but you have to do those things somewhat," he said. "You can't be negative -- you have to be somewhat of a cheerleader at times. Now we're starting to prove that we are worthy of having this team."

But since Pocono, the No. 44 Toyota has begun to show signs of improvement. Jarrett qualified 13th-quickest at Kansas and ran well until he was sidelined by mechanical issues, which gives him the belief that he'll have a competitive car come Sunday.

"Being able to start there and run with the guys would be great, and this is a long race so we'll have plenty of time to adjust on the car," Jarrett said. "The one thing that will hamper us a little bit is the lack of running on these types of tracks this season -- we ran well at Kansas and we were sitting in a pretty good spot when we went back from that rain delay, we had a valve spring break and we didn't really get to see where we would have run there."

Even though Jarrett spent most of Friday's practice session working on his qualifying setup, he immediately knew he had a car capable of running near the front.

"When you practice making only one-lap runs, it's hard to get it to do what you want during the race," Jarrett said. "But when you have a car that's doing the things that mine was doing [Friday] -- that gives me a lot of hope for a good race on Sunday.

"The idea of what is a good run has changed tremendously not only from my perspective, but because of the level of competition. If I can compete Sunday and get a top-15 finish -- that would be great."

So are Jarrett's retirement plans on hold?

"No. I'm good and I'm still good with that," he said. "It's a lot of fun to come here and run this well and know that we're getting the team to this point. Obviously as happy as I am to have this run and that Michael [Waltrip] made the race -- we still didn't get all three cars in the race. The car that hasn't had any problem qualifying this year with David [Reutimann] misses the race. But I'm very happy with the situation and scenario that I have for next year."