Valterri Bottas, Formula 1 driver, will participate this weekend in the gravel world championships in Belgium. The Finn qualified for the event last April.
Valterri Bottas (35 years old) will not take advantage of his weekend to work on the settings of his Kick Sauber Ferrari single-seater. The Finnish Formula 1 driver will be involved in another sport and another competition: the gravel world championship in Belgium. A great fan of the discipline (between road cycling and mountain biking with courses on stony paths), he qualified for the Worlds last April by taking sixth place in the Swartberg 100 (South Africa). This is good for him since the F1 world championship has been on break since the Singapore Grand Prix won by Lando Norris on September 22, and until that of the United States on the weekend of October 18 to 20.
Often present at his partner’s races
The F1 world vice-champion in 2019 and 2020 has not scored any points this season with a thirteenth place as his best result. The results are no better for his Chinese teammate Zhou Guanyu (0 points). Failing to shine on the circuits, Bottas compensates on two wheels and without an engine. The pilot also regularly attends the races of his partner, the Australian cyclist Tiffany Cromwell.
On Saturday, he will start at 12:07 p.m. in the 35-39 year old category but not in the elite professional race and its five-star field. The reigning champion, the Slovenian Matej Mohoric will be at the start like the Dutch superstar Mathieu Van der Poel (road world champion in 2023 and cyclo-cross world champion), the 2016 Olympic champion Greg van Avermaet and other names well known to the pelotons like Florian Vermeersch, Jasper Stuyven, Tim Merlier, Tiesj Benoot or Jaroslav Kulhavy, Olympic mountain bike champion in London in 2012.
There will also be some very good people at the start among the women Lotte Kopecky, world road champion for the second year in a row, or the Frenchwoman Pauline Ferrand-Prévot, Olympic mountain bike champion.
