HOUGHTON, MI -- It was a double victory for Subaru Rally Team USA this weekend at the Lake Superior Performance Rally, where driver Ken Block staged a come-from-behind victory to take the overall win and Travis Pastrana secured the 2006 Rally America Championship driver’s title.

“It feels awesome,” said Block, at the finish. “We’ve had some bad luck recently and we’re really happy with the win.”

Block, along with co-driver Alex Gelsomino, charged hard in the final stages of the notoriously challenging race to pull ahead of teammates Travis Pastrana and co-driver Christian Edstrom.

Pastrana secured the overall drivers’ title earlier in the race, when key championship challenger Matt Iorio slid off the road and rolled. He and co-driver Ole Holter were unharmed, but their car took heavy damage and they were unable to continue. The roll cost them any chance of overtaking Pastrana in the battle for championship points and, with only one race remaining in the series, the best they can hope for is second.

And even that could be a struggle. Block’s victory puts him within one point of Iorio and the two crews will now battle it out for second at the final round in Washington in early December.

“It puts the pressure on Matt and makes for a good showdown in the final race,” said Block.

Pastrana had started Day 2 with a strong lead and had looked ready to take his third-straight win, but Block sent consistently faster times on Day 2 and pulled ahead with just two stages to go.

Block, who has failed to finish nearly half the races he’s started this season, was in need of crucial championship points this weekend. There has been some speculation that the Subaru Rally Team USA brass may have asked Pastrana to take it easy in the final stages in order to help his teammate in the overall battle.

“It was definitely important that I get a lot of points,” said Block. “We were both looking out for each other.”

But Pastrana may have taken it too easy near the end of the contest, and his moderate place cost him not one position, but two. Veteran driver Tim O’Neil took the opportunity to turn up the heat pull ahead of Pastrana in the final stage and cross the finish line in second-place overall.

“I was driving pretty wimpy for most of the rally,” said O’Neil, a respected rally driving instructor who counts both Block and Pastrana among his students. “I don’t like to prove anything… but I do like to educate them.”

Chris Gilligan and co-driver Joe Peterson finished LSPR in fourth place in their Mitsubishi Evo IV, while Matthew Johnson and co-driver Kim DeMotte rounded out the top five in their Production-GT Subaru WRX.

Johnson also scored a championship victory this weekend. He took the Production-GT title just by crossing the start-line. Although he and challenger Tanner Foust have been fighting a close battle all season, Foust suffered a bad crash last month in Colorado and was absent from this weekend’s contest.

Jonathan Bottoms and Carolyn Bosley took top Group N points in the contest, finishing 6th overall.

The fastest two-wheel drive car was the Group 5 2005 Dodge SRT-4 piloted by Cary Kendall and co-driver Scott Friberg to eleventh overall, followed by motocrosser Kenny Bartram and co-driver Dennis Hotson, who finished thirteenth in their Production class Volkswagen Bug. The Group 2 class victory went to James Robinson and co-driver Andrew Jessup in a Honda Civic.

Some top competitors in the series had a poor start at this characteristically challenging rally. Iorio and Holter took their hard roll on a slick corner early on Day 1, while Andrew Comrie-Picard and co-driver Marc Goldfarb were forced to retire early after they struck a rock on the first stage.

Based at the tip of Michigan’s northern peninsula, the Lake Superior Performance Rally is a challenging event that features a range of weather and road conditions. Course roads range from gravel to mud and truly fickle autumn weather means crews can expect everything from snow to pouring rain.

LSPR is the eighth event in the nine-event Rally America championship series. The score will be decided at the final round, Wild West, on December 1 – 2 in Olympia, Washington.