{"id":616236,"date":"2026-04-19T02:23:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-19T02:23:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/616236\/"},"modified":"2026-04-19T02:23:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-19T02:23:08","slug":"valtteri-bottas-lands-a-gravel-podium-at-sea-otter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/616236\/","title":{"rendered":"Valtteri Bottas lands a gravel podium at Sea Otter"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Sea Otter brings a novel mix of mountain biking\u2019s most famous racers. World champions, gravel royalty and mountain biking icons are all competing at venues scattered around Laguna Seca Speedway. The most famous person to land on a podium this weekend, though? That is undoubtably Valtteri Bottas.<\/p>\n<p>Finn finds speed in California<\/p>\n<p>The Finnish driver is an icon of F1, making him by far the most globally famous person at Sea Otter this weekend. While he currently races for Cadillac on the track, he\u2019s not shy about putting significant time into his side quest: gravel racing. He\u2019s lined up for age group races around the world between F1 events, including gravel worlds.<\/p>\n<p>Bottas added a Sea Otter podium to his rather more illustrious F1 achievements. The Cadillac driver finished the 60 mile Sea Otter gravel event in 3:31:02, averaging 16.83 mph to take third in the men\u2019s 30-39 category behind\u00a0Bicycling\u2018s Dan Chabanov and category winner, Italy\u2019s Giacomo Giuliani.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/cyclingmagazine.ca\/sections\/news\/rowdy-retrofuturism-gravels-past-and-future-take-over-sea-otter\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Rowdy Retrofuturism: Gravel\u2019s past and future take over Sea Otter<\/a><\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p>This actually isn\u2019t Bottas\u2019s first gravel podium. The Finn <a href=\"https:\/\/cyclingmagazine.ca\/sections\/ridesevents\/what-are-these-f1-drivers-doing-on-bikes\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">finished second in his age category (fifth overall) in the 64 mile race at SBT Gravel back in 2021<\/a>. If that didn\u2019t convince him to give up racing F1 full time, this weekend\u2019s podium probably won\u2019t either.<\/p>\n<p>A different role in pit lane<\/p>\n<p>Bottas wasn\u2019t in California just for his own two-wheeled exploits. He was also spotted in the feed zone during Thursday\u2019s Life Time Grand Prix season opener, the 90 mile gravel race. Bottas was helping hand up bottles for partner Tiffany Cromwell. Both Canyon athletes, Cromwell finished 21st in the elite women\u2019s race.<\/p>\n<p>If we\u2019re going to get into the stats, Cromwell finished the 90 mile race with an average of 16.64 mph, a hair slower than Bottas but the elite gravel racer held that pace for extra two hours, finishing 10 minutes behind race winner Sofia Gomez Villafane\u2019s winning time of 5:10:39.<\/p>\n<p>While we\u2019re here, Andew L\u2019Esperance had a super start to his LTGP season, finishing 10th in the elite men\u2019s gravel race. The Canadian\u2019s strengths generally lie in the more technical races later in the season, so it\u2019s great to see L\u2019Espy launch into the season at full speed like this.<\/p>\n<p>Anyway, that\u2019s your bi-annual update on the intersection of age-group gravel and F1 racing.<\/p>\n<p>And no, neither rider \u00a0was on <a href=\"https:\/\/cyclingmagazine.ca\/gravel\/rowdy-retrofuturism-gravels-past-and-future-take-over-sea-otter\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">one of the many new 32\u2033 gravel bikes roaming around the Sea Otter booths.\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sea Otter brings a novel mix of mountain biking\u2019s most famous racers. World champions, gravel royalty and mountain&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":616237,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[569],"tags":[64,63,784,817,256120,85,1512],"class_list":{"0":"post-616236","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cycling","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-cycling","11":"tag-f1","12":"tag-gravel-news","13":"tag-sports","14":"tag-valtteri-bottas"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/616236","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=616236"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/616236\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/616237"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=616236"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=616236"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=616236"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}