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news
Valtteri Bottas StravaF1 star warms up for Melbourne Grand Prix with 30km/h ride...uploaded to Strava, of course
How did Valtteri Bottas warm up for his 8th-place finish at the Melbourne Grand Prix this morning? With a 30km/h training ride, of course. And, like any true cyclist, the Finnish F1 racer uploaded his spin to Strava...
Nice for some, getting paid to roll along the Aussie coast in toasty temperatures of 18-24°C (depending on which of his Garmin Epix Gen2 or Strava you trust more).
Admittedly, Lewis Hamilton's former Mercedes teammate did then have to go and race a Grand Prix, finishing 8th, so it is not all pedalling along promenades.
With that said, Bottas' 30km/h average speed, on what was presumably a relaxing pre-race warm up, hints at the Finn's fine fitness which saw him finish second in his age category on gravel racing debut at the SBT GRVL event in Colorado last summer.
I guess you would get pretty quick pretty quickly if your partner is Canyon-SRAM pro and two-time women's Giro d'Italia stage winner Tiffany Cromwell.
Last week, Bottas was snapped cheering on Cromwell as she raced the cobbles of the Tour of Flanders, supporting team leader Katarzyna Niewiadoma.
This shot of Valtteri Bottas looking so happy while taking a picture of Tiffany Cromwell at Flanders is so important to me pic.twitter.com/aZLgfbJsUb
— Robyn (@robynjournalist) April 4, 2022
So, when you have got a women's WorldTour training partner to keep up with perhaps it should not be a surprise to see the 32-year-old Alfa Romeo driver tapping out relatively easy 30km/h rides.
The joys of urban cycling will explain all those stops and accelerations, but helped Bottas burn 577 calories before the racing had even begun.
The 10-time Grand Prix winner regularly shares his rides on Strava, with one recent activity attracting a comment from a British fan offering Bottas a place on the local club run when he arrives at Silverstone in July. Could Valtteri be coming to a Northamptonshire lane near you?
Bottas is not the only cyclist in the Formula 1 paddock. Four-time world champ Sebastian Vettel often pedals to races, with this J.Laverack Bicycles' beauty featuring Shimano DuraAce Di2, Pro Vibe carbon bars and ÆRA's forks, carbon seatpost and 700c carbon wheels his ride of choice.
This week, the now-former No.1 mechanic of Formula E outfit Jaguar TCS Racing, Charlie Forkner, landed himself in hot water after a screenshot emerged of a foul-mouthed social media post in which he ranted about cyclists who do not use cycle lanes.
Forkner said cyclists who ride in the road when there is a cycle lane available should be "ran over [...] dragged onto the path and p*ssed on by everyone!". Shortly after, Jaguar TCS Racing released a statement saying the mechanic was "no longer associated" with the team.
Dan is the road.cc news editor and joined in 2020 having previously written about nearly every other sport under the sun for the Express, and the weird and wonderful world of non-league football for The Non-League Paper. Dan has been at road.cc for four years and mainly writes news and tech articles as well as the occasional feature. He has hopefully kept you entertained on the live blog too.
Never fast enough to take things on the bike too seriously, when he's not working you'll find him exploring the south of England by two wheels at a leisurely weekend pace, or enjoying his favourite Scottish roads when visiting family. Sometimes he'll even load up the bags and ride up the whole way, he's a bit strange like that.
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14 comments
I can't get too excited about a 30kmh ride on a very flat course
Indeed. 160W isn't exactly pushing it for a professional sportsman.
I think we maybe ought to remember that he was competing in a Grand Prix that afternoon...
Many moons ago, when I was young, and Schumacher was a serial World Champion, I worked for Formula 1 Management. This involved me going to all the Grand Prix a week or so early to help prepare for the race. One season, a colleague and I decided to run the entire circuit at every Grand Prix. Which we did - reading this article makes me realise that I missed the opportunity to cycle every circuit.
Wasn't Schumacher a keen cyclist who used to ride the circuits before/after practice for fitness? I seem to remember him challenging members of the press corps to a bike race round one circuit and handing out a good thrashing to them.
Yes, there's been quite a few F1 drivers who have been very into cycling ... two that spring immediately to mind are Jensen Button (remember his Chris Froome Ventoux parody video?) and Mark Webber, who used to organise a sportive in Northamptonshire and sustained multiple injuries ahead of 2009 season when he was hit head-on by a driver while cycling in a charity event in Tasmania; he also drove in the final race of the 2010 season, where he still had a chance of winning the drivers' championship, with a shoulder injury picked up while mountain biking and which he apparently concealed from team management.
And, of course, there's the FACT that turned out to be more FICTION.
Yes, saw a feature not long ago (GCN? Not sure) where Webber and Alain Prost rode Alpe d'Huez in 2018 with Prost climbing it in 62 minutes at the age of 63, which is mighty impressive!
Also, additional to previously mentioned, Alex Wurz was BMX World Champion as a kid, and Stoffel Vandoorne is a keen road cyclist (he's Belgian so probably obvious).
Further much of the BSB, WSB, and MotoGP paddock are keen cyclists for the obvious benefits of cardiovascular health, strong core and lower body strength that is critical to doing 70 laps of a circuit at race pace...
The road racers are impressive too: IoM TT veteran Guy Martin has completed the USA coast to coast cycle race, which is unsupported, just competitor and their bike...
Two wheels good!
A friend of mine does timing of races around the world (not F1) and visits lots of the tracks. He cycled one and got a puncture which I thought was strange due to the care used on them.
Having cycled on circuit and airstrips, I would say that circuits are less careful than air side. Specifically Foreign Object Damage (FOD) is an RAF obsession. After riding RAF Waddington, we has to walk the strip and taxi ways line abreast to make sure there was nothing left behind.
£80 MN airplanes could be 'lost' by a 10p bolt into the jet turbine...
He finished 8th.
I spend the day of an F1 race attempting to avoid all notices of results. Being a watcher of highlights on channel 4, I don't watch other news and try and be careful when reading the guardian's website. Never thought road.cc would give a result away, glad you got it a bit wrong, adds to the randomness.
Oops, apologies for the not-quite spoiler ...