Yanbu (3 January 2026) – The first hurdle is behind Tim and Tom Coronel. In the prologue, the brothers finished 49th, officially kicking off their tenth Dakar adventure. On the 22-kilometre course around Yanbu, they clocked in just over a minute and a half behind Mattias Ekström in their striking green Century CR7 T1+. “Easy peasy,” Tom says about the opening run. “We’re ready for the real stages, because 22 kilometres isn’t enough to get me warmed up.”
The days leading up to the prologue weren’t without their highlights. During the administrative checks, Tom found himself in a surprising debate with the FIA over his spray-painted HANS device. “Suddenly, ten people were fussing over it,” Tom laughs. “Even though I’ve been racing the Dakar with it for ten years. It’s just carbon, spray-painted like a helmet.”
Good balance in the car
The prologue itself went smoothly. The course took the brothers through varied terrain with stones, hills, and technical sections winding through the trees. “Fairly fast at the start,” Tom explains. “There were a few really nasty stretches between the rocks, with lots of stones. Not exactly a trial, but rough. And then a very fast section with some twists between the trees, some tricky bits in there.”
For Tim, it was all about enjoying the first metres in the desert. “Wow, that felt good. We’ve been looking forward to this for so long, and it’s always a bit nerve-wracking, but it felt really solid,” says Tim. “The car had a nice balance, the dampers have been adjusted, and that setting gives us more stability. Normally, we get a lot of hard hits in the car, but this time it was much smoother.”
The new damper setting is one of the improvements Team Coronel has made compared to last year. “Everything felt good, the car was rock solid,” Tom continues. “Navigation went well, Tim kept a steady pace. We know there’s more speed in us, but it’s good to start like this. We didn’t go flat out, but our speed was good enough.”
A green standout
The team’s new main partner, Emotive, has given the car a striking new colour this year: green and white instead of the familiar blue. Even at the start, the team received compliments. “We’re getting a lot of comments about the green car,” says Tom. “The big boss who stood with us on the podium said, ‘Wow, that’s really going to stand out.’ And he’s absolutely right.”
From rocks to sand
After the prologue, the team took to the starting podium, and preparations for the first real stage began immediately.
Tomorrow, a challenging opening stage awaits, again starting and finishing in Yanbu. A 305-kilometre stage with two completely different faces. The first part winds through rocky terrain with narrow passages, where driving hard is a challenge and punctures lurk around every corner. Halfway through the special stage, there’s a pit stop, after which the terrain becomes sandier with fast sections and small dunes. “Let’s just get those three or four hundred kilometres done as quickly as possible,” Tim concludes with confidence.
