SUMMARY
- Valtteri Bottas kick-started a healthy campaign by selling his nude pictures in a calendar.
- The Finnish driver managed to gain over $150,000 for the 'Movember' movement.
Starting races from strong gird positions, and contributing to Mercedes‘ Constructors’ Championship victories, Valtteri Bottas is widely respected in the Formula 1 community. Known for his calm demeanor on the track and skillful driving, Bottas has showcased his ability to compete at the highest level of motorsport.
However, contrary to his demeanor on the track, Bottas has raised $150,000 for men’s health charity Movember after a ‘Bottass 2024’ calendar featuring photographs of him showing his backside, fully naked. The Bottass calendar is available on his website for $22 of which $5.45 will go to the Movember movement, which promotes research towards prostate cancer, male suicide prevention, and Testicular cancer, among other causes.
How and why did Valtteri Bottas come up with nude calendar?
Bottas stated that he had the idea of the nude calendar with his photographer Paul Ripke after his partner Tiffany Cromwell took a picture of Bottas lying naked in a stream in Aspen, Colorado. The photo was loved by the audience on Instagram and was sold for charity.
In a conversation with Express Sport about the roots of this project, Bottas said “It was actually… We were already joking, it was kind of last year, you know when I posted that one photo in the river, that ‘What if you do a calendar or something?’ It was first just for laughs.”
Bottas also in a statement to speedcafe.com in the Las Vegas Grand Prix said “I have had questions, people asking me ‘Why did you do that? Why do you want to show your ass? But then when I explained the charity aspect, people got it, and we had so much fun, as you can imagine, taking those pictures.”
While speaking to Speedcafe, Bottas stated that he knew people who had struggled with prostate cancer. “I think with men as well, like Movember, focusing on men’s health, many people are quite afraid of speaking about those kinds of things,” Bottas told Speedcafe. “So I went all out, showing myself, trying to set an example. It’s a human body, you don’t need to be shy”.
The calendar was announced before the Las Vegas Grand Prix and the first 10,000 copies were sold out. Another batch of 20,000 calendars were printed and were also snapped and purchased by Formula 1 fans from across the world. Bottas’ calendars blew up, a thing which was started by him just for fun and laughs.
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However, the Alpha Romeo driver’s participation was not limited to the nude calendars as he also shaved his recent iconic mustache and documented the process of regrowth every single day on his social media accounts along with raising awareness for men’s mental health.
How did Valtteri Bottas react to his mother’s skepticism?
Bottas’ mother was skeptical about his project’s execution. But to this, he said, “She doesn’t really understand English that well, and she had seen some videos I had posted. She was quite confused and protective, asking me ‘Are you sure that’s the path you want to go?’. So I explained the charity thing, and it’s fine.”
However it is not the first time that Bottas has shown explicit content for a good cause as last year in May, 5000 nudes were sold and the proceeds gained were given to charity.