Valtteri Bottas Made The Top 20 In This Grueling 100-Mile Gravel Race

Valtteri Bottas has been in Formula 1 for a while now, having first raced in the sport for Williams Racing back in 2013 with Williams Racing. Now, after a wildly successful stint at Mercedes and a switch to Alfa Romeo, the Finnish driver is trying his hand at two-wheeled racing and spent his summer break competing in a 100-mile gravel race in Colorado.

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Bottas, who has ten F1 race wins and 1,792 championship points to his name, spent the past weekend in the U.S., competing in the SBT Grvl event in Steamboat Springs, Colorado. The course covers 100 miles and includes more than 6,500 feet of elevation gain – it’s no casual Sunday ride.

During the final race on Sunday, Bottas joined more than 900 gravel riders taking on the event’s Blue Course, which is one step below the 140-mile circuit the pros race on. The Finnish racer managed to complete the course in an impressive five hours, 17 minutes, and 29 seconds, averaging a speed of 18.92 mph over the 100 miles.

The result was enough to earn Bottas 20th position out of the 935 riders that entered, and he ranked 8th in his 30 to 39 age bracket. That’s a mighty impressive result for the Finn.

For his entry, Bottas turned to a special version of Canyon’s Grail gravel bike. The model, called the Grail CF SL VB77 features a special blue paint scheme and every top-end component you could dream of – including a carbon frame, carbon wheels, and Sram’s excellent XPLR eTap wireless groupset.

From the looks of Bottas’ Instagram over the race weekend, it looked like he was having a lot of fun competing on the rough stuff. On Friday, the Alfa Romeo racer entered the Hillclimb event at SBT Grvl, turning up to the 2.2-mile climb dressed as Duffman from “The Simpsons.”

Taking to Instagram after the event, Bottas said “Duff Man rode the @sbtgrvl HLL CLMB. Duffman won the costume competition

“[Duffman] won amount of his weight (and mates) of @denverbeerco beer and [Duffman] donated all of it to the people attending @sbtgrvl as spectators or competitors. Cheers!”

I imagine that must have been a strange experience for the other riders who turned up to compete in the hill climb, seeing Bottas dressed as Duffman handing out beers to everyone at the event. The Finn really is living his best life right now.