choosing a 260-mile (419km) bike ride over a flight<\/a> from last weekend’s Formula 1 race in Sepang, outside the Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur.<\/p>\nThe 37-year-old began his journey just hours after spinning out of Sunday’s chaotic Grand Prix, taking a trip that involved off-road and gravel trails as well as cycling at night.<\/p>\n
“I saw some snakes, which I was a little bit worried about, but actually they were pretty chill. They were just doing their thing,” said Bottas.<\/p>\n
“I saw one cobra, 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.<\/p>\n
“I had to jump over it on a bike because I saw it last minute. I got chased by one dog, I got stuck behind a group of cows on one small track.”<\/p>\n
Bottas is an accomplished cyclist and earned a spot at the Gravel World Championships after finishing fifth in his age group at a qualifying event in the Czech Republic during Formula 1’s summer hiatus.<\/p>\n
Unfortunately for Bottas the World Championships take place this weekend as well, so he will be competing on four wheels instead of two.<\/p>\n
When the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix was cancelled in 2023, Bottas decided to use the time to compete in a gravel race in Scotland.<\/p>\n
Bottas has endured a difficult return to Formula 1 with new team Cadillac this season. He is 22nd in the drivers’ standings, is yet to score a point after 16 Grands Prix and has failed to finish eight races.<\/p>\n
“The wildest part was the riding at night in the jungle. The noise in there, your mind starts to play games,” added Bottas.<\/p>\n
“‘What is out there? Who knows what is out there?’ But then you just need to crack on and keep going.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Cadillac driver Valtteri Bottas says he was chased by a dog, saw snakes and leapt over a lizard…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":795909,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[59,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-795908","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-gb","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/795908","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=795908"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/795908\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/795909"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=795908"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=795908"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=795908"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}