Saturday 1st of January Dakar 2022 started. The first stage (1a) was a short route of 19 kilometres. During this stage Tim and Tom had to get used to the new car, but were very satisfied with the result!

Sunday the 2nd January it was time for the first serious stage (1b) of the Dakar Rally, a 333 kilometre loop with start and finish in Ha’il, was unexpectedly tough. Especially in terms of navigation. At 270 kilometres into the contest trial, one after another went wrong. Some participants needed two hours to find the right path. Thanks to the attentiveness of the Coronels, they saw a helicopter on time. Helicopters are normally close to the route, so they drove back and there it turned out to be the waypoint everyone was looking for. It was one big tangle of bikers, cars and trucks. Making no mistakes is the most important task in the Dakar Rally. Tim and Tom Coronel stuck to it perfectly in stage 1b of the 2022 edition. This promptly earned them a surprising nineteenth place. As it was only the first stage, the Coronel brothers were also nineteenth in the standings, 1 hour and 48 seconds behind classification leader Nasser Al-Attiyah.

Stage 2 was held on Monday the 3rd of January. The stage was full of dunes, interspersed with fast sections. This landscape lent itself perfectly to the Century of Tim and Tom Coronel. The ‘Desert Lion’ cut through the butter like a warm knife. This gave the twins the 28th time after 338 kilometres. They could not repeat the nineteenth time of Sunday 2 January, but that was not the expectation. Tim and Tom Coronel needed four hours and two minutes for the 338 kilometres: 37 minutes more than stage winner Sébastien Loeb. Due to earlier rain, the marathon bivouac was cancelled, so the twins still had a connection of 270 kilometres to the bivouac after the special. The stage on Tuesday 4th of January will be 254 kilometres.