The irony is not lost on Jeff Gordon. "You take Kyle Busch," said Gordon, the four-time Sprint Cup champion.

"I will be behind him maybe not running quite as fast and he comes off the corner sideways, taps the wall at about the start-finish line and goes on. And he does it lap after lap after lap.

"I am sitting there with a grin on my face because he's not really driving away from me and I am saving my stuff and staying away from the wall. There are times when that pays off for him, but I am comfortable with where I am, too."

He knows that what he's thinking when watching the 23-year-old Busch blossom into NASCAR stardom is the same thing drivers like Dale Earnhardt and Rusty Wallace were thinking when Gordon first emerged as a young star.

Gordon was just shy of his 23rd birthday when he got the first of his 81 career victories in May 1994 in the Coca-Cola 600 at Lowe's Motor Speedway.

He got the 81st here in October of last season, winning the Bank of America 500 for his sixth victory of 2007. It gave him a 68-point lead over Hendrick Motorsports teammate Jimmie Johnson as Gordon sought a fifth championship in a season very much like the days of dominance when he won 40 races and three championships between 1995 and 1998.

But he hasn't won since, and people wonder what's gone wrong with the driver once nicknamed "Wonder Boy."

"Yes," Gordon admits, "I find myself saying the same things about the young guys they used to say about me.

The reason I can say it is I've been there. I understand."

There is, however, the other side of that coin. As each of the sport's greatest stars moved forward in his career, at some point each faced

times when things didn't come as easily as they seemingly once did.

Earnhardt won at least twice each year from 1983 through 1991, winning 45 races and four championships in those nine seasons. He won only once and finished 12th in the standings in 1992, but then came back to win titles in 1993 and 1994.

Wallace followed his 1989 championship season by winning only five races over the next three seasons and finishing outside the top five in points each year. But he won 10 races in 1993 and eight the next year.

Darrell Waltrip won 43 races and three championships from 1981 through 1986, but he only won once in 1987 when he defected from Junior Johnson's team to Rick Hendrick's. Over the two seasons following that, he won eight times.

"You go through periods when you're not as successful because that's life," Jeff Burton said. "There are a lot of things that have to line up to make everything work.

"Jeff is a victim of his own success. ... It's unrealistic to expect anyone to go out every single year and knock off six or eight wins. ... This is hard. When people make this look easy it's because they're good and everything lines up.

They make it look easy and when it no longer does, it's not because they can't do it anymore. It's because it's hard."

There are those who would offer other explanations for the 35-race winless streak Gordon finds himself trying to snap in Saturday night's Bank of America 500.

Gordon did hit the wall jarringly hard this year in a race at Las Vegas, and it has often been said that drivers change after taking a jolt like that.

"I've hit a lot more walls than some of the young guys these days, and when they hit maybe it doesn't hurt as much as it did when I started," Gordon said. "I am only scared when I see a hit like the one at Vegas coming."

He also has made gobs and gobs of money - by this time next year Gordon will almost certainly have become the first NASCAR driver to win more than $100 million in his career. He'll pass the $98 million mark this weekend.

"There are guys out there who you say 'Why is he out here riding around?'" Gordon said. "I've seen that. Is it just the money is too good? Every guy tells himself, 'I don't want to be in that position. I don't want to be doing it for the money or the glory or holding on to something that's not there.' But I've seen guys do it."

Burton said anybody who thinks that's Gordon's problem is off base.

"Jeff might raise his hand and say 'I'm done' a year from now or two years from now," Burton said. "But if he does, I can assure you that in what he has left he would give 100 percent. I race with Jeff every week and he's not laying down."

Gordon insists he'll keep right on asking himself the same three questions he always has when it comes to deciding how much longer he'll keep going.

"Am I competitive? Am I healthy enough? And am I enjoying myself?" Gordon said. "When any of those change, I am going to step away."