We came across a post on X claiming that Cadillac Formula One driver Valtteri Bottas is cycling from Sepang in Malaysia to Singapore for the Singapore Grand Prix. The post estimates that the route would likely cover 250 miles, or about 400 kilometres, and take 14 to 16 hours of cycling.
The two races are unusually close together this year. The Sepang race was the 2026 Bahrain Grand Prix, which was relocated to Malaysia after Formula 1 and the FIA agreed on 26 July 2026 to move it out of Bahrain. RacingNews365 reported that the original April date at Sakhir was lost after war broke out in the Middle East.
The race ran on 4 October and was officially titled the Formula 1 Gulf Air Bahrain Grand Prix in Malaysia. Sepang had not hosted a Formula 1 race since the Malaysian Grand Prix ended in 2017. The Singapore Grand Prix follows a week later, from 9 to 11 October, which gave drivers a short gap to travel the roughly 300 kilometres between the two circuits.
When we conducted our research on the claim, we found that Bottas himself announced the ride. He wrote on X: “Yea I’m riding to Singapore… on the gravel roads less travelled.” He set off on the night of 4 October, after his race ended early. AsiaOne and The Malaysian Reserve both reported that he spun into the gravel on a wet track and retired from the race.
His progress can be followed through his own Strava activity, which AsiaOne reported is labelled “Malaysia to Singapore Day 1”. The first leg ran 56.6 kilometres from the circuit to the Port Dickson area in 128 minutes, an average of about 28 km/h. The second day covered 161.9 kilometres in five hours and 46 minutes, according to The Star, which also reported that Bottas posted videos of himself riding at night with only a torch on his helmet. GPFans reported that he stopped overnight in Bukit Bakri, near Muar in Johor, after the second day.
Members of the public in Malaysia have also posted sightings. AsiaOne reported that a Threads user shared a video of Bottas at about 9.11pm on 4 October, picking his way through heavy traffic outside Sepang on what appeared to be a Canyon Grail gravel bike. A second Threads user, Nazmi Aiman Kamarudin, posted footage at 5.49pm on 5 October showing Bottas and another rider passing him at Sungei Udang in Melaka, about 245 kilometres from Singapore. World of Buzz reported that his partner, Australian professional cyclist Tiffany Cromwell, has been riding with him.
The ride fits Bottas’s well-documented interest in cycling. Jalopnik reported that he logged more than 5,500 miles on Strava in 2023 and uses long rides to unwind between races. He also recently qualified for the Gravel World Championships by finishing fifth in his age group at a qualifying event in the Czech Republic. That event falls on the same weekend as the Singapore Grand Prix, so he will be racing in Singapore instead. He has also cycled into Malaysia from Singapore before: The Peak noted a cross-border ride ahead of the 2024 Singapore Grand Prix.
In summary, Bottas announced the trip himself on social media and has documented it with Strava activity and videos. Members of the public in Malaysia have filmed him on the road, and multiple news outlets have reported it. Estimates of the total distance vary, from 320 to about 400 kilometres, and his arrival in Singapore has not yet been confirmed, but the core claim that he is cycling from Malaysia to Singapore is accurate. Therefore, we rate this claim as true.
