'Top Gun' Bottas takes to the skies!

Valtteri Bottas certainly knows how to spend his free weekends!

For a race 'off' week between the Canadian and French races, he accepted an offer from the Finnish Air Force to see how things look from the cockpit of a state-of-the-art fighter jet rather than a ground-based Mercedes W09.

He was thrilled to take part in an air show aerobatics display at Tikkakoski airport, celebrating the 100th anniversary of the national air force.

"It’s an honour to celebrate the Finnish Air Force centennial and fly with the AKK Flying Finn insignia," he said ahead of the flight. "At the start of my career, I got important support from the AKK driver path.

"I have no idea what to expect from the upcoming air show, but I believe that the Hawks pilots are going to provide us with a once-in-a-lifetime experience that I will remember forever."

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Young rallying prodigy Kalle Rovanperä was also given the opportunity to take part and find out what life was like soaring in the clouds rather than splashing around in the snow and mud.

"I believe that the Flying Finn drivers will do great," predicted air combat instructor Major Timo Rauhal before the flight. "It is especially amazing to offer them this challenging but unique experience.

"We’ll see how they cope with the G-forces and what the over 1,000 km/h speeds feel like!

It certainly seems that the event more than delivered on Bottas' expectations. Here's a short video that he posted on social media after taking to the skies, with what was definitely the best seat in the house to see the display!

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.