56km on a Bike After Finishing Last: Bottas Ditches the Plane for Singapore
While most of the grid filed straight onto charter flights, Valtteri Bottas chose a rather different way to process finishing last at the Bahrain Grand Prix in Malaysia — he got on a bike. The Finn cycled 56.6 kilometres from Sepang International Circuit to Port Dickson in two hours and eight minutes, documenting the start of the ride on Instagram on Sunday evening.
It’s not a random stunt. Bottas is a serious cyclist, co-founder of the gravel races FNLD GRVL in Finland and RADL GRVL in Australia, and this year he qualified for the UCI Gravel World Championships via top-five age-category finishes. His relationship with Australian professional road and gravel rider Tiffany Cromwell rounds out the picture of why a bicycle, not a limousine, made sense.
The timing isn’t trivial, either — the calendar throws the paddock straight from Malaysia into Singapore, one of the season’s toughest logistical combinations: a tight border crossing into Singapore, plus a full adjustment from a daytime race to a floodlit night event. While the mechanics were busy crating up the garage for the flight, Bottas apparently decided a bit of cadence beats dwelling on a last-place finish.
Strava verified the distance and time — unlike Sunday’s result, at least these numbers look good.
Source: RacingNews365 (https://racingnews365.com/valtteri-bottas-taking-remarkable-route-to-singapore-after-ditching-plane)
