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Valtteri Bottas' love for cycling is known by everyone in the fraternity. He has been seen on track before, either on a cycle or in a racecar. The Finn has now reportedly taken part in a local club cycling race in the Adelaide Hills in southern Australia.
Reddit user '_amorphous_' posted a screengrab of the popular tracking app Strava that featured the Finn's racing stats:
Earlier this year, when asked about how often he rides, he replied:
“It depends. When I’m racing a lot, like if I have three weekends in a row then I need to rest between the races. I may ride once a week. When I have a week off of racing, then I might ride most of the days.”
Several other F1 drivers are known to use cycles as their preferred mode of transport. Most notably, Aston Martin driver Sebastian Vettel and Alpine driver Fernando Alonso ride cycles, with the latter even getting into an unfortunate cycling accident last year.
Valtteri Bottas reveals Alfa Romeo choice after Mercedes exit
In the middle stages of the 2021 season, Mercedes decided to discontinue the services of the Finn. Bottas had been a part of the Brackley-based team for five years. The team decided to replace him with George Russell, who has been part of their driver development program for some years now.
When asked about this, Bottas commented that it was not an easy decision. He, however, had a feeling that, between Alfa and Williams Racing, the former was the best option. He said:
“It was not [an] easy decision. I tried to take as much information as I could from both sides, and at the same time, listen to my gut feeling. Just based the decision on information that I had.”
“[It was] not easy. I really feel like Williams is on the upside now. I think they have a good future. But somehow I had a feeling that Alfa was the right thing for me.”
The team — formerly Sauber Racing — goes into the 2022 season with the driver pairing of Bottas and rookie Guanyu Zhou.
