The taxi from Nice took half an hour, the Tesla’s electric engine providing a faint, meditative whirr of the sort that invites introspection. I spent the journey mulling over questions. Something about the new regulations, perhaps. Lewis Hamilton. What it actually feels like to out-qualify the fastest man on Earth, repeatedly.

By the time we reached the outskirts of Monaco, however, I’d talked myself out of all of it. These were questions that had been asked a thousand times in featureless airport hotels by faceless journalists with voice recorders. In a word, banal. As it happened, I needn’t have fretted. From the moment we arrived at the quiet lane where Valtteri Bottas keeps his villa, I thought about Formula 1 precisely once.

Everything else was considerably more unexpected.

He was coming off his bicycle as we pulled up—clipless cycling shoes clacking on the tarmac, helmet still on, looking, I thought, rather phlegmatic for one so rain-soaked. ‘Sorry I’m late,’ he said unconcernedly. ‘It started raining and I took shelter under a tree. Come in. It’s warmer.’

He led us through to the living room, announced he was going to shower, and disappeared. On looking around, I noticed not a single thing in the room to suggest its owner had spent the better part of a decade driving cars at 200mph. What there was, however, occupying a glass pedestal in the corner, was a single pink ballet shoe.

I stared at it for quite some time.

The shoe, it emerged, was not Valtteri’s—or at least, not originally. It had belonged to the villa’s former owner, the dancer, defector, and legendary bon vivant Rudolf Nureyev, who had apparently taken his wardrobe with him everywhere but left this particular item behind. It is not every afternoon that a visit to a racing driver leads you, unexpectedly, to Nureyev. I found myself with entirely new questions swirling in my head.

Valtteri returned, damp-haired and composed, and immediately offered coffee. My colleague asked for a flat white—chuffed at now being able to say at parties, with complete honesty, that she has been the recipient of a Formula 1 driver’s latte art. I, meanwhile, noticed that the kitchen coffee station was identical to how I remembered it from two years prior—same machine, same position, same cups. Whether this reflects something particular about Monégasque domestic habits, or simply the lifestyle of a man who has identified what he needs and sees no reason to complicate it further, I couldn’t say, and didn’t ask. Some questions feel impertinent in the presence of good espresso.

The espresso itself was interrupted by a phone call. In the stillness of the surrounding countryside, the voice on the other end carried with remarkable clarity—unmistakably English, unmistakably male. I couldn’t help myself. Was it George, I asked—fellow F1 driver George Russell, inquiring after something borrowed for a barbecue, perhaps? Valtteri looked at me with an expression of patient amusement. It was not George. My reason for visiting Valtteri was simple: to catch up with a friend of Standart, and to ask him which specific coffees he’d pair with particular situations he frequently finds himself in. Valtteri, being as he is a bona fide coffee geek and co-owner of Finland-based Kahiwa Coffee Roasters, had very specific recommendations indeed.

Later, for photographs, we asked if he might take us out in the car. Sports cars being what they are—two seats, no exceptions, no apologies—my colleague and I took turns. When she climbed back out, she reported that Valtteri drives on winding roads in a manner entirely unconducive to carsickness—either a testament to extraordinary restraint or sheer skill. Perhaps both.

He also explained, somewhere in the midst of all of his coffee recommendations, why he cycles so much. It makes him happy, he said. And standing there, in the drizzle-damp quiet of his lane, between Nureyev’s shoe and an interrupted espresso, it was difficult to argue with his approach.