NASHVILLE -- By all rights, Alex Barron shouldn't have had to wait until he was 31 years old to score his initial Indy-car victory. It should have happened a couple of years ago. And it should have come in Championship Auto Racing Teams, not Saturday night's Indy Racing League Firestone 200.

But nothing about Barron's career has been logical or fair.

Stamped for stardom following his breakout season in Toyota Atlantics in 1997, the cool Californian always had a timing problem in CART.

He joined Dan Gurney in 1998 when All-American Racers was trying to develop a chassis (Eagle), an engine (Toyota) and Goodyear tires were being eaten alive by Firestone.

He got a couple shots with Team Penske in 1999 but that was during a period when The Captain had the wrong chassis, engine and tires.

He nearly did the impossible and won races in Australia and Fontana, Calif., in 2000 for the out-manned and underfunded Dale Coyne Racing -- only to be denied by blown engines.

In 2001, he made a couple forgettable starts in IRL and CART and it appeared he might be another one of those talents who simply slips through the cracks of today's fragmented landscape in open-wheel racing.

	Alex Barron won in just his 11th career IRL race.

The train hadn't passed by Barron just yet but it was definitely leaving the station.

And that's why his triumph Saturday night at Nashville Superspeedway seemed so justified. He never gave up on himself, unlike everyone in the CART paddock except Larry Blair.

"It's been a struggle and it's been very hard on me mentally, I've really had to dig down the last couple of years," he admitted after leading the final 11 laps to edge Gil de Ferran.

"I hadn't won a race since '97 and I've run a lot of races since then but either I didn't have the right equipment or something always seemed to happen at the end of the race."

Blair, who had tested CART's expensive waters in 2001, opted for the IRL this year and his veteran team has been competitive everywhere.

"It's a new team, fundamentally, but there is a lot of experience and maturity," said Blair, whose sponsor RayOVac nearly got treated to an Indy 500 win last May. "We've shown a lot of speed all year and we all believe in Alex."

With former road racing champ Tom Gloy calling the shots for Blair, veterans like John Dick (engineer), Bob Sprow (team manager) and Gary Neal (chief mechanic) were brought in the mix and there was instant chemistry.

"This group has come a long way in seven and a half months," said Gloy, whose pleasure was doubled Saturday when his Trans-Am team (Butch Leitzinger) also found victory lane in Washington, D.C. "This was the kind of day that makes racing so rewarding because, to be honest, I thought we were in big trouble going in."

Barron had been the slowest car in the final practice period Saturday afternoon, almost to the point of being hazardous, because the grip of his car vanished.

"I couldn't even touch the throttle. It was all over the place," he explained. "So we decided to change everything for the race and go back to where we were when we tested here. It worked."

However, he dropped from fifth to last during the first pit stop of the night when the air jack failed and only some good calls by Gloy, a ton of yellow laps for accidents, good fuel mileage and a hard charge by Barron got them this unlikely result.

It was a little sweeter because Barron beat Team Penske, an old employer that really didn't give him time to shine. After his short test/driver stint in '99, Penske switched to Reynard/Honda and hired Helio Castroneves and de Ferran. Both became stars, while Barron wondered what might have been.

"Obviously, I'd have loved to run that combination with Penske," he said. "But Larry is a good guy who believed in me and this is the breakthrough in my career.

"I always knew I could do it but this helps a lot."