Jeff Burton trying to keep edge on young crowd.(The Orlando Sentinel)

Byline: Jeff Burton

LAS VEGAS _ Jeff Burton is like a big time Texas Hold'em player who's won big here in the past _ bigger than anyone else _ but is down a bundle lately to younger, more reckless poker players.

Burton, 35, is the most successful driver in the short history of Las Vegas Motor Speedway. In five years of NASCAR racing here, he's won two Winston Cup races, finished second in another, and won two Busch Series races.

So you'd think he feels all sorts of confidence, starting a solid seventh, going into Sunday's UAW-DaimlerChrysler 400.

But the game has changed, in a blur, in a year. Burton knows he's lost the edge to NASCAR's young guns, such as his 24-year-old teammate, Las Vegas native Kurt Busch.

Last year, after five consecutive multiple-win seasons, Burton didn't win a single Cup race. And this is the place where he'd like to apply the old Vegas high rollers' assurance to each other and themselves: "You'll come back . . .You'll come back." Meaning from `way down to `way up.

But trying to get his edge back has Burton in a quandary. "I want to be wide open," he said Saturday, of adjusting to the new ways of NASCAR racing.