Bottas begins 350km cycle to Singapore with Cromwell

Valtteri Bottas is cycling from Malaysia to Singapore with professional cyclist Tiffany Cromwell, BBC Sport reported on Monday. The Cadillac driver began the 350km journey after retiring from Sunday's Bahrain Grand Prix at Sepang. Much of their route is on gravel or off-road, and he must reach Singapore for Thursday's media duties.

Watch the highlights:

Bottas covered 161.91km in nearly six hours on Monday, the second stage of the trip. The 37-year-old also qualified for the Gravel World Championships by finishing fifth in his age group at a Czech event during Formula 1's summer break. He cannot take up that place because the championships clash with the Singapore Grand Prix.

The ride comes amid a difficult return to F1 with Cadillac. According to the BBC, Bottas is 22nd in the championship, without a point after 16 Grands Prix, and has retired from eight races. Cycling offers a familiar activity between his racing commitments.

An earlier BBC News report documented his participation in The Gralloch in southern Scotland in 2023, after the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix was cancelled. Bottas finished 114th overall, completing the 70-mile course at Gatehouse of Fleet in just over four hours. Cromwell won the women's event, giving the pair different competitive outcomes from the same weekend away from Formula 1.

That event in Galloway Forest Park was the first UCI gravel world series race held in the UK. Connor Swift won the men's competition, which also featured Olympic triathlon gold medallist Alistair Brownlee. The field extended well beyond professional competitors: 861 riders started and 779 finished, with participants representing more than 30 nations. Spectators also turned out in large numbers to watch the competition.

Cromwell's account of that Scottish course described a combination of fast gravel and tougher sections, with riders able to approach it at different levels of effort. Bottas, meanwhile, said he had enjoyed the challenge. Those previous experiences provide a documented example of the cycling interests the pair share outside his F1 schedule.