Quintanilla replicates second place at the end of the first Dakar 2022 stage

I feel like my rally is over. I said the same thing last year on the first day, but I lost a lot more time today. I opened the stage really well today, I thought, until I let my team-mate passed me for three minutes. Here we are now, really far back. I hope my team-mate Pablo has a good rally and we are here for him. The navigation was, honestly, really tricky before refuelling and I did a really good job – I was by myself. At about kilometre 257 we lost the way. We decided to go cap 10 average on a piste. Joan, Toby, Andrew and Kevin never saw a piste that went 10 average. I went back two or three times and never found it. We made big circles until we found it and then we rode together until the end.

It was a tough, complicated day. Last night it rained and washed out some tracks, the route was barely visible. I tried to push throughout the whole stage, even at the note at kilometre 268, where there was a hidden waypoint that was very difficult to find. I took it easy, navigated well and in the end it turned out to be a good day. It was very physically demanding, with a lot of changes of direction, on tracks that were not very visible, very fast and stone-filled... but I feel good, with good pace. I think it was a great day.

It was a tough stage, at the beginning I rode conservatively, not very fast, and not going badly. But from the refuelling onwards I started to push a bit, I picked up the pace, the speed and I felt much better. There was a confusing note near the end. I was following what the roadbook said but I wasn't very confident that it was right. It didn't make sense what I was doing... In the end, I followed the tracks and ended up finding the waypoint. I'm not sure if it was my mistake, but we'll keep looking ahead because there's still a long way to go.

It was a difficult stage, the whole day was tough, but especially during the final 50 kilometres, where there was a note with a waypoint that was not visible. We arrived with very few references and it was almost impossible to find it; we had to do a very long loop, I went through the same place several times and at the end I was even starting to worry about the fuel. In the end, with the reference of other drivers I was able to find it. But well, it's the first day, there's still a long Dakar ahead and this is a taster of what everyone can expect over the coming days.