'Your mind starts to play games' - Bottas's jungle ride to Singapore

Valtteri Bottas encountered snakes and had to hop his bike over a monitor lizard while cycling from Malaysia to Formula 1’s Singapore Grand Prix on a three-day journey that included riding at night through the jungle.

The Cadillac F1 driver, a keen and competitive cyclist, opted to take on the challenge of travelling more than 200 miles by bike after F1 rearranged its calendar to put the Bahrain Grand Prix in Malaysia the week before the usual Singapore race.

It started as a light-hearted comment from his partner, professional cycling Tiffany Cromwell, based on the proximity of Malaysia’s capital Kuala Lumpur to the Marina Bay area where the Singapore GP is held.

Bottas was intrigued and explored which routes he could take and what was viable to cycle across the days in between given these races are taking place back to back so any elongated journey would eat into critical recovery time before Friday practice and sprint qualifying.

His eventual plan - which involved a support vehicle following nearby - was plotted with the help of local cyclists.

On Monday and Tuesday he cycled around 100 miles, leaving him a shorter ride to finish on Wednesday “kind of like a recovery ride”.

Bottas joked that the bike seat “becomes like a cheese grinder” on a hot, sweaty ride like that but that he “obviously wouldn't do it if I knew it would hurt my performance”.

He said it was not as demanding as some of the single-day rides he has done that were twice the distance as these, or the competitive gravel races he has run, and in fact hopes it could just help in one of F1’s most demanding races of the year by way of heat acclimatisation.

Where the ride did get intense was navigating through parts of the route at night, and dodging wildlife along the way.  

“I saw some snakes, which I was a little bit worried about, but actually they were pretty chill,” Bottas said.

“I saw one cobra. I saw one python just crossing the path in front of me. I saw some of those big lizards that you also see here – one was on the path, I had to jump over it with the bike. So I saw it like last minute.

“Got chased by one dog. Got stuck behind a group of cows on a small track. Eventually they moved away.

“And what was the wildest part? The riding at night in the jungle. The noise in there is like...Then your mind starts to play games of what is out there. Who knows what is out there?

“Then you just need to crack on and keep going. Riding with your lights at night, that was probably the most epic part in the forest.”

For all his cycling experience, Bottas had not ridden like that on a single track in the dark with a light before.

Riding at night was partly for Bottas to adjust to the offset Singapore schedule but it also helped reduce the amount of daytime cycling in the heat.

“At least you know that in the wild there's nothing that is going to hunt you,” said Bottas. “I don't think there's any tigers or anything.”

He was told at the end of his media sessions there are tigers in the wild in Malaysia - however, it was highly unlikely he would encounter them by chance given their dwindling population and the fact they are more common further north than the route Bottas was on.

Encountering wild boars, which can be around two metres long and weigh upwards of 200kg, was much more likely at night.

The cycling exploits were a welcome break from yet another disappointment this season for Bottas, who spun out of the Malaysian race on Sunday - which put a dampener on a generally more competitive weekend than he had enjoyed for a while.

Bottas said it helped him get rid of the frustration and “it definitely cleared my mind immediately” with his attention now on a hopefully better Singapore weekend for back-of-the-grid Cadillac, which remains the only team not to score a point this season.

“It was a fun adventure,” Bottas added. “I'm really glad I did it because like the locals said, I saw almost the whole of Malaysia in four days and the wild side of it.

“Without my bike I would never see those things. So if there's something in the future that makes sense and that I can recover for racing, sure.”