A stuck throttle pedal cost Claudio Menzi the title points lead on the third round of the Campeonato Argentino de Rally (Argentine Rally Championship), the Rally del Petróleo y los Dinosaurios, although the Fiat factory driver is still very handily placed as the season unfolds.

After the opening two rounds, the championship moved to the Patagonian region of Cutral-Có and Plaza Huincual, the main cities of the famous oil producing area for round three. First held in 2001, the Rally del Petróleo y los Dinosaurios offered the crews at totally new challenge. After the flat terrain of Buenos Aires and the hilly stages of Córdoba, this event features a great variety of surfaces with the desert as common denominator.

On the previous round, the Rally de Villa Dolores, Menzi gave the first victory for the new breed of "Maxi Rally" cars in the Campeonato Argentino de Rally, a category which has been introduced to try to lower costs and increase car diversity. Argentinean rallying has been utterly dominated in recent years by the Mitsubishi Evo and Subaru Impreza and with neither of the Japanese brands having much of a sales impact in the country it has diverted attention away from rallying. To dramatically cut escalating costs the ambitious new "Maxi Rally" category was devised, an aspiration very similar to the "Super 2000" category in Europe, but with a much greater use of stock components. In effect a "kit" it uses a stock four-wheel-drive system (with Subaru diffs), a 4-cyl 2.4-litre normally aspirated Honda engine that has 280 HP at 7,600 rpm on tap, and a 6-speed sequential gearbox. The Punto shell used for the "Maxi Rally" contender is the Brazilian built 5-door model and features a Super 2000 inspired aero package.

Menzi arrived at the Rally del Petróleo y los Dinosaurios with a 6.5 point cushion in the championship standings over Juan Matchetto (Mitsubishi) who was giving his old Mitsubishi Evo IX a final run before jumping to a brand new Ford Fiesta like the one his VRS team-mate Federico Villagra drives. Fiat is back in Argentinean rally after a 15 year break and on round three Menzi's team mate Christian Confetti was hoping to get off the points mark for the season.

The Rally del Petróleo y los Dinosaurios was held over 10 stages, six on the opening day and the final four on day two to make up a total timed distance of 140.60 km. The 10 km long opening stage was won by the VW of Miguel Baldoni but Menzi was just 0.6 seconds back after setting the second fastest time and in a sign that the Fiat Punto Maxi Rally would be competitive proposition on this surface team mate Confetti was fourth quickest (+9.2 seconds). Menzi was third fastest on SS2, just 2.1 seconds off stage winner Marchetto but with Baldoni sandwiched between them, the pair remained at the top of the leaderboard after a second stage, separated by just 1.7 seconds. Menzi then went third quickest of SS3, and he was also 0.4 seconds quicker than Baldoni to chip the gap at the top of the standings down to just 1.4 seconds. The Fiat pilot was third quickest again on SS4 but lost 1.9 seconds to Baldoni and the gap opened out to 3.3 seconds.

A blistering time from Federico Villagra (Ford) on SS5 was 6.8 seconds quicker than Menzi and hauled the Fiesta Maxi Rally driver up between Baldoni and Menzi on the leaderboard, Menzi now trailing Baldoni by 6.2 seconds and Villagra by 5.1 seconds. On the final test of the first leg, Villagra went quickest again to move into the overall lead, while Menzi was fourth fastest to further consolidate his third place. The Punto Maxi Rally driver went into overnight parc ferme 9.7 seconds adrift of Villagra but with 5.4 seconds in hand over fourth placed Marchetto. Baldoni meanwhile was 4.7 seconds off the lead as the new breed of "Maxi Rally" machines locked out the three podiums positions.

Into leg two's final four stages on Sunday and Menzi kicked off on SS7 with the second fastest time. While Villagra won again to extend his lead to 9.4 seconds over Baldoni, the Fiat driver took 1.6 seconds out of the VW pilot to close the gap to second place to just 4.4 seconds with only 3 stages remaining. However on the longest stage of the rally, the 18.8 km first running of SS8 it all went wrong for Menzi and a stuck throttle cost the Fiat star 1 minute and 28.3 seconds as he posted the 20th fastest overall time and plunged down the leaderboard to seventh place. With just two tests left Menzi was 7.4 seconds behind sixth placed Alejandro Cancio (Peugeot) while team mate Confetti was a distant 29.2 seconds away in fifth place. Still suffering, Menzi lost 28.4 seconds on the penultimate stage (SS9) to the quickest driver in the pack, Baldoni, and that opened up the gap to Cancio to 25.3 seconds although the Fiat driver was comfortably seventh as eighth placed Nicolas Diaz (Mitsubishi) was more than a minute adrift. Luck was finally on Menzi's side as he stroked it through the final test (SS10), dropping another 36.2 seconds, as Cancio lost more than a minute and that allowed the Fiat driver to jump up to sixth place in the final overall standings, 57.6 seconds behind his team mate Confetti who finished fifth to collect his first top ten result of the season. Meanwhile in Class 9, Mauro Debasa (Fiat Palio) finished second - as well as 23rd overall - completing the 10 stages 39.5 seconds down on the class-winning Ford Ka. A second Palio, this time driven by Gabriel Dips, made it two of the Italian cars in the top four places of Class 9.

Sixth place however only netted 15 points for Menzi and it punted him out of the title lead, the Fiat driver now has 64.5 points, dropping to second place behind Marchetto who moves into the lead thanks to his very consistent finishing on all three rallies so far in the old and reliable Mitsubishi: 22, 21 and 27 points respectively collected on rounds 1, 2 and 3 give him 70 points. For round 4, Marchetto is set to be driving a new Ford Fiesta Maxi Rally like round 3 winning team mate Villagra. Baldoni, who finished second, netted himself 36 points and that moves him to third place in the standings on 53 points. More ominously however is Villagra's haul of 49 points on this event, he won half the stages (5) and from a zero score on both the opening rounds he is now in fifth place in the table and already 1.5 points ahead of the second VW driver, Gabriel Pozzo. Also off the mark for the season is Menzi's team mate Confetti, the Fiat factory driver collected 18 points for fifth place to move him to ninth place in the points standings after three rounds.