Of the world championship competitors, only Subaru appeared with new cars for this event but two of the private WRCar teams had cars which were new for them. The Red Devil Atolya Kazaz team had an S11 (2005 spec) Impreza for the first time (Solberg's Wales Rally GB winning car) for Kristian Sohlberg to drive, and First Motorsport acquired another Skoda Fabia for Francois Duval to drive, the car which Hirvonen had crashed in Japan last year. The main pre-event difficulty faced by teams in Rally d'Italia Sardegna concerned the curious 2006 engine pairing rules. This situation meant for the Stobart VK M-Sport Ford Rally Team made a hasty return of cars from Argentina. This was safely accomplished, but then there was panic because Matthew Wilson's engine sprang a water leak the day before the start and an engine change (with a mandatory one-minute penalty) was deemed wise.
This was the first time in the championship where not only chassis and engine had to be paired, but also transmission units as well. Except for the special rules regarding the M2 team engines, all these items are to be used next month on the BP Ultimate Acropolis Rally. On technical specifics, Marcus Gronholm's Ford had the latest version uprated engine while Hirvonen had an engine built to Gronholm's previous specification. A team engineer explained why Hirvonen had his valve failure in Argentina: "It was to do with both shipping practicalities and event pairing rules! The valve weakness was identified last January, but by that time the engines were on their way to Mexico, and the engines had to be used also in Argentina with no chance for us to rectify the trouble. It was a problem waiting to happen."
The reason why Gronholm had transmission troubles in Argentina was surprisingly found to have been due to - a water splash. Water had ingested the electrical systems which in turn led to damage in the transmission.
In the FIA Junior World Rally Champiosnhip there was a change when Estonian driver Jaan Molder entered a Suzuki Ignis in place of the Fiesta he had driven in Sweden and Rallye Argentina. The two official Suzuki cars of Andersson and Wilks were new Swifts, but otherwise, it was "business as usual."
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