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Valtteri Bottas got to the Singapore Grand Prix the hard way: 418 kilometres of Malaysian road and jungle over four days, one cobra, one python, a lizard big enough that he had to bunny-hop it at the last second, a dog that gave chase, and a herd of cows that refused to move off a single-track lane.
The Cadillac driver set off from Sepang on the Sunday after the Bahrain Grand Prix in Malaysia and crossed the Johor-Singapore Causeway on Wednesday, logging every stage on Strava: 56.60km on day one, 161km on day two along the coast past Malacca City, another 161km on day three, then a 40.16km recovery spin to finish the job. He arrives at Marina Bay for Sunday’s race having covered the distance between two Grands Prix under his own power — a journey most of the grid completed in roughly an hour of flight time.
Snakes, cows and a lizard at speed
The wildlife was the part that travelled. “Saw some snakes, which I was a little bit worried about, but actually they were pretty chill,” Bottas said, describing one cobra and one python crossing the road in front of him. The lizard was the genuine emergency — spotted late, cleared with a hop of the bike. Then came the dog, and the cows on a track too narrow to pass.
Riding through forest after dark was what stayed with him. He called it “probably the most epic part in the forest,” adding: “Your mind starts to play games of what is out there.” The heat was its own opponent in a country where daytime humidity sits near 90 per cent. “The amount of sweat in those days was quite impressive,” he said.
The idea came from a throwaway remark by his partner, the Australian professional cyclist Tiffany Cromwell, about how close the two circuits sit on a map. It only became feasible because of an unusual calendar quirk: the Bahrain Grand Prix was relocated to Sepang after the race in Bahrain was called off, slotting it in the week before Singapore and putting two Grands Prix within a few hundred kilometres of each other. Bottas, who founded his own gravel race in Finland and has long been the most committed cyclist in the paddock, saw a window and took it. “I was surprised how big it became,” he said of the reaction.
A pointless season and a cleared head
The timing was not incidental. Bottas lost the rear of his Cadillac on soft tyres at Sepang and went into the gravel on lap nine, classified as an accident, having started 19th. Sergio Pérez brought the other car home 29.310 seconds off the winner. Cadillac leave Malaysia as the only team on the grid yet to score a point in 2026 — zero in the constructors’ table, Bottas 22nd and Pérez 23rd in the drivers’ standings.
Bottas said the ride “cleared my mind immediately” after the frustration of the retirement, and he was quick to pre-empt the obvious criticism of a driver spending three days on a bike between back-to-back races. “I obviously wouldn’t do it if I knew it hurt my preparation,” he said. The argument has real substance: Singapore is the most physically punishing race on the calendar, a two-hour street fight in cockpit temperatures above 50C where drivers routinely lose three kilograms. Four days of sustained effort in equatorial heat is close to a textbook acclimatisation block.
It also fits a pattern. Bottas, a 10-time Grand Prix winner who spent a year on the sidelines as Mercedes reserve before Cadillac brought him back to a race seat, has built a second identity around endurance cycling rather than the usual off-season gym content. For a driver at a team with nothing to defend in the standings, the ride is the most visible thing Cadillac have produced in weeks.
What Marina Bay asks next
The race itself carries a first. Marina Bay hosts a sprint weekend for the first time, compressing the schedule into a single hour of practice on Friday before sprint qualifying, with the sprint and conventional qualifying both on Saturday and the Grand Prix on Sunday 11 October.
That format change matters most to the teams with the least data, and Cadillac are exactly that. The American squad is the first genuinely new constructor to enter Formula 1 since Haas in 2016, and a street circuit with one practice session offers the thinnest possible margin for a team still learning its own car:
- No long-run practice data before the first competitive session
- Two sets of parc fermé rules to navigate across one weekend
- A circuit with no run-off, where a single error ends a session
Points remain a stretch. But Bottas crossed the Causeway heat-adapted, mentally reset, and carrying the kind of story a last-placed team cannot buy. Whether that converts into anything on Sunday is a separate question — and the first corner at Marina Bay is considerably less forgiving than a cobra.
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**Word count:** 737. Sources used for verification:
– [ESPN — Bottas cycles 400km from Malaysia to Singapore](https://www.espn.com/f1/story/_/id/50131303/valtteri-bottas-cycles-impressive-400km-malaysia-singapore-grand-prix-snakes-were-pretty-chill-marina-bay-circuit-formula-1)
– [The Race — “Your mind starts to play games”](https://www.the-race.com/extra/your-mind-starts-to-play-games-bottass-jungle-ride-to-singapore/)
– [Crash.net — 2026 Singapore GP schedule](https://www.crash.net/f1/news/1106593/1/f1-2026-singapore-grand-prix-start-time-and-full-weekend-schedule)
– [RacingNews365 — 2026 standings after Bahrain GP in Malaysia](https://racingnews365.com/2026-f1-championship-standings-after-bahrain-grand-prix-in-malaysia)
– [Malay Mail — From Sepang to Singapore](https://www.malaymail.com/news/sports/2026/10/06/from-sepang-to-singapore-f1s-valtteri-bottas-swaps-race-seat-for-350km-bike-ride/237850)
One note: distance figures vary across outlets (350km, 400km, 418km, 420km). I used 418km because it matches the sum of the Strava splits ESPN itemised.
Sports journalist and editor at SportsPortal.net. Covers cricket, football, Formula 1, tennis, and basketball with a focus on how global sports connect with Pakistani audiences. Follows the PSL, Pakistan national cricket team, Premier League, and major international tournaments. Has reported on sports for digital audiences since 2021.
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