In honour of Lewis mentioning him on Grill the Grid (and in case you were wondering who the man is and why people on twitter and tumblr were shocked to hear his name mentioned in the year of our Lord 2025); a short run down on Adrian Sutil, his relationship with Lewis and the cause of their fallout.
CN: Mention of blood, stabbing, and stitches.
Adrian Sutil — after Nico Rosberg and Sebastian Vettel — is the third German (or in his chase German-Uruguayan) Formula One driver with interesting links to Lewis Hamilton.
Sutil is a Japanese F3 champion and was in F1 from 2007-2011 & 2013-2014. In F1, he is most well-known for being the guy with the second most race entries without a podium at 128 race (or maybe first, now that Hülkenberg got his podium.)
There have been rumours (old Boulevard Press articles and forum entries) about him being gay, and while that is no one's business, it will become important later on. The rumour mainly stemmed from the fact that during his F1 days — at least before the scandal — he never had a girlfriend.
Sutil met Lewis during his Euro F3 days, and they quickly became friends, to a point where “Hamilton's friend” referred more to Sutil than Nico Rosberg, if you can believe it.
The two of them were travelling together and at one point were even talking about getting an apartment together in Paris, even though that one never worked out.
There is a pic were it almost appeared as if they were holding hands (and this was during the Old Testament Lewis days mind you.)
Now for the scandal:
After the 2011 Chinese GP — which Lewis one — him, Adrian Sutil and Lewis‘ bodyguards made their way to the M1NT Club in Shanghai were later on Sutil would get into it with Luxembourgish businessman Eric Lux (evil coded name if you asked me) who at the time was a co-owner of Lotus Racing, after getting rich from selling Skype.
That night, after some verbal arguments, Sutil glassed him (broke a glass & stabbed him) in the neck with a champagne flute, but later said he only wanted to throw the liquid at him. And now guess who — according to Sutil — saw everything? One Lewis Hamilton.
Back in the day, there were some whispers that the fight had broken out because Lux had made some homophobic remarks about Sutil (and in an extent potentially Lewis.)
Apparently Lux started the — at first purely verbal — fight, of which security footage exists even though it is black & wight and incredibly low resolution. One German Boulevard Paper (incredibly unreliable, think German The Sun) said that it started with Lewis‘ bodyguards trying to make room for Lewis, because he felt mobbed by some fans. They say it’s possible that Lux would not step away. They also allege that a woman spilled her drink over Sutil's pants and Lux somehow got involved (tough it is unclear how those things might be related)
What is clear, however is, that Sutil and Lux got into a verbal disagreement that ended with Sutil stabbing a glass flute into the neck of Lux, resulting in a cut that missed his carotid artery by a centimetre and needed 24 stitches to get it fixed.
In the aftermath, Sutil said that the incident had occurred is his off-time as a private person and he wanted to keep it private, but that he had been in an unlucky incident where he accidentally hurt another person and that he regrets it & has apologized. The media and FIA equally accepted that it was a private matter, which is why there isn’t much actual information about it to be found.
Multiple people in F1 came to his defence and said he was not the type of guy to get in a fight and that they know him to be really calm & gentle. His lawyer only said that they “got verbally entangled” and that “it was just two alpha men clashing” (whatever that’s supposed to mean.)
They tried settling the matter outside of court. Sutil claimed that Lux demanded a large amount of money — two years of his salary to be precise, which in Sutil's case would have been around 4 million Euros — and for him to voluntarily step back from racing for multiple races. Interestingly enough, there were voices calling this an extortion attempt on Lux’s part. With Sutil claiming, "[Lux] was threatening to destroy" him.
There were rumours Lux asked for the break from racing to either replace Sutil with one of his own drivers (as he was the owner of a driver management) or that he was trying to gain an advantage for his own team with Subtil sitting out a few races.
After the failed settlement attempt, the case went in front of a court in Munich, Germany in January 2012, where Adrian Sutil was sentenced to 18 months of suspended sentences as well as a 200 000€ fine, which went to charity. He also lost his seat at Force India due to the controversy at the time.
Back to Lewis Hamilton's involvement in the story:
Sutil claimed he saw the whole fight and would be able to testify in his favour by supporting the claim that the stabbing had been an accident.
Hamilton however stated that he’d be unable to attend the court hearing as a witness due to it interfering with the McLaren car launch that year (or maybe the team made him say that for PR reasons,) but he did write a letter that was read out in court stating that he hadn't seen the fight and therefore could not exonerate Sutil.
Between the absence from court and the letter he sent, Sutil stated that he no longer wanted to be friends with Lewis Hamilton and going as far as calling him a coward and saying that he “wasn‘t a man.” He did however mention that Anthony Hamilton send him a supportive text, wishing him luck for his court case.
Lewis Hamilton later stated that they’d talk at some point, but that he never went up to him to talk (and he changed his phone number). Sutil said he “needs to grow up,“ among some other bitter sounding things (making him sound like a scorned ex-lover.)
In an interview from 2022 Sutil revealed that he was still waiting for Lewis Hamilton to reach out to him.
