Argentina is the second round of the FIA's Production Car world championship, with 23 out of the 28 regular drivers electing to take part on this event. This event continues to be a favourite for PCWRC crews but this year is quite an exception. In 2007 23 PCWRC crews took the start in Argentina beating the four year record of 22 in New Zealand in 2003.

Following the homologation of the spherical bearing suspension item and continuing work with engine mapping, there is new promise for Subaru's new 2008 version "N14" Group N cars, which have suffered problems on previous world rally championship events. It is believed seven of these cars are being entered in Argentina, four as PCWRC competitors and three prepared by Barattero as privateer entries for Argentines Gabriel Pozzo and Claudio Menzi and the Saudi driver Yazeed Al Rahji. 26 year old Al Rajhi is the first driver from Saudi Arabia to compete in a world rally championship event since the days of Abdullah Bakhashab. Riyadh resident Al Rahji has only contested seven rallies in his career to date, all in the Middle East, and won the Kuwait Rally being run as candidate to MERC 2009. His codriver is Steve Lancaster, champion MERC codriver with Nasser Al Attiyah in 2003.

The organizers nominated two Guest drivers, Tango team driver Marcos Ligato and Sebastian Beltran who drivers for the VRS team run by the Munchi's driver Villagra. Both are in Mitsubishis. Of the 23 drivers this will be a first appearance in the PCWRC this year for 10 and the first for the 17 year old Russian Evgeny Novikov, the youngest driver ever in the series.

Travis Pastrana will make his debut in the PWRC alongside Derek Ringer.The 51 year old Ringer was a regular world championship competitor alongside Colin McRae till 1996, entered occasional world events with Martin Rowe and Katsu Taguchi before accompanying Colin again in 2002 and 2003. Most importantly he was world champion with Colin in 1995 and three times British champion codriver.

Slovenian driver Andrej Jereb is to drive the Motoring Club 1 PCWRC car in Argentina - with sponsorship from Dunlop! Despite long time support by Dunlop, he has already used "foreign" tyres on world championship events - namely BF Goodrich products on PCWRC events before. Motoring Club chief Gabriele Favero explained that although all four wheel drive cars must run with Pirelli tyres on world championship rallies, there are alternative commercial arrangements available to allow drivers to promote other brands of tyres. Most notable driver to take advantage of this arrangement is Fumio Nutahara who has had long time support from Yokohama/Advan tyres. Like Jereb, Nutahara's first appearance this year in the PCWRC will be Argentina but this will be the Japanese driver's first recent appearance with another brand of tyre.

In the absence of Swedish Rally winner Juho Hanninen the performances of Jari Ketomaa and Patrik Sandell are worth watching. The Swede will drive the Peugeot 207 S2000 car runned by the team of former rally driver Gert Blomqvist with the help of the Swedish Peugeot importers. The team have already started to construct a second car for later in 2008.

Positions in Production Car World Rally Championship: Hanninen 10 points, Ketomaa 8, Sandell 6, Prokop 5, Nittel 4, Arai 3, Araujo 2; Sousa 1.

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foto 1: Al Rahji in action in Kuwait
foto 2: the new homologated Subaru wheel bearing
foto 3: Evgeny Novikov