Travis Pastrana Wins his First Rally Championship!

Houghton, Michigan – 10/23/06 – Travis Pastrana just keeps on winning this year, this time winning the Rally America National Championship in only his second year of competition. 

Travis Pastrana has had quite the year, winning three X Games Gold Medals, landing the first ever double-backflip in competition, winning the highly coveted Red Bull X Fighters Freestyle competition and now winning his first rally championship.  The motorcycling racing phenom turned rally car racer became the youngest Rally Champion in Rally America history this weekend by winning the 2006 Rally America National Championship.  Travis held a strong lead in the championship hunt coming into the penultimate round and needed only a 6th place or better to grab the championship.  However when 2nd place in the championship standings crashed out of the rally on the second stage it handed Pastrana the championship despite there still being one more race to go. 

"This is amazing, its been a great year for us, everything has just worked so well, the car, the team and my co-driver Christian Edstrom have all just clicked together perfectly," exclaimed Pastrana. "We can't celebrate yet, as we are in the middle of a rally fighting for another win, but the pressure is really off now and we can have some fun!" Travis has been the dominate force this year in the Rally America series, earning three rally victories, four 2nd place finishes and a Gold medal at the inaugural X Games Rally event where he narrowly beat out his hero and WRC legend Colin McRae.  You can catch Travis next as he competes in the legendary Baja 1000 before traveling to Washington for the final rally of the 2006 Rally America Series. 

Travis would like to thank his sponsors: Red Bull, Thor, Parts Unlimited, Alpinestars, DC Shoes, Michelin, Suzuki, Cernics, Ogio, Smith Optics, Subaru, JD Motoring, Nixon, EVS and Kicker Inc.