Race car drivers are absolutely a different breed.
It takes a special type of person to strap themselves into a rocket ship on wheels and push it to the limit, risking life and limb as dozens of other similarly-minded individuals do the same thing around you, pushing themselves to the limit in the pursuit of the checkered flag.
That means when drivers get a break from the action on the track, they might find different ways to unwind. Formula 1, for example, is in the middle of a long three-week break until the final stretch of the season, a triple-header that takes the grid from Las Vegas to Qatar and then finally to Abu Dhabi for the last race of the season.
Some drivers are vacationing, and others like Max Verstappen and Lando Norris — the two drivers left chasing the F1 Drivers’ Championship — are taking to streaming video games.
Then there is Valtteri Bottas.
Earlier this month Sauber announced that Gabriel Bortoleto would be sliding into the second seat with the team for next season, driving alongside Nico Hülkenberg. The move means that Bottas is without a full-time seat in F1 next season, and you might expect that the driver would have taken a bit of R&R with the news.
If so, you thought wrong.
Bottas did not exactly take the announcement sitting down. Instead, the Finnish driver decided to complete an “in-villa Ironman,” replicating a triathlon at home:
Bottas needed just over an hour to swim 3.8 kilometers in his pool. Cycling 180 kilometers took a bit longer, about five and a half hours for Bottas.
He then took to the treadmill to complete his “in-villa IronMan,” running the marathon to finish out the triathlon in just under 11 hours. As you can see in the above video, Bottas got some encouragement along the way, including a video call from triathlon legend Jan Frodeno.
While it has been a while since Bottas won a Formula 1 Grand Prix — his last victory came at the 2021 Turkish Grand Prix — this marks the second season in a row that Bottas “won” a break during the F1 season. Last year Bottas and his partner, elite cyclist Tiffany Cromwell, traveled to Colorado to compete in the SBT GRVL cycling event. Bottas entered the SBT Hill Climb, dressed as Duffman from The Simpsons:
He might not have a seat for next year, and it has been a long time since he tasted victory in F1.
But Bottas remains winning at life itself.