What happened to Adrian Sutil? From F1 driver to hypercar collector

When a racing driver leaves Formula 1, where does he go? For many drivers, the answer is simple: Another race seat, or a punditry gig, awaits. Some drivers, though, are a little harder to track down.

Take Adrian Sutil, for example. After seven years as an active Formula 1 driver in the late 2000s and early 2010s, the German driver seemingly disappeared off the map.

Adrian Sutil: From Formula 1 driver to hypercar collector

Born on January 11, 1983 to a family of professional musicians, Adrian Sutil perhaps didn’t have the racing start one would have expected. Rather, he was raised on the piano, absorbing a handful of languages courtesy of his German mother and Uruguayan father.

Sutil didn’t get his start behind the wheel of a kart until he was 14 years old, but it wasn’t until 2002 that he moved up to his first official single-seater series, the Swiss Formula Ford championship — where he quickly became the champion by winning all 10 rounds of the series from pole position.

Soon after, he moved on to Formula BMW and the Formula 3 Euroseries, and in 2005, he finished runner up in F3, just behind a rising star named Lewis Hamilton.

Sutil’s big break came in 2006, when he won the All-Japan Formula Three Championship, finished third at Macau, and took on a role as a test driver at Midland for a handful of events.

Spyker, a Dutch car company, bought out Midland for the 2007 season, where Sutil was promoted to race alongside teammates Christijan Albers and Marcus Winkelhock. Though he only finished in the points once that season, he critically outperformed his fellow Spyker drivers for most of the year.

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The 2008 season saw Sutil continue with the team, which had been once again rebranded, this time as Force India. Both the team and its driver struggled with consistency, only finally scoring points in Italy the following year.

That being said, 2010 and 2011 looked to be promising in terms of growth for both parties, with a slew of regular points-paying finishes providing Sutil a best World Drivers’ Championship finish of ninth.

But then, disaster struck. After the 2011 Chinese Grand Prix, Sutil got into a scuffle with Lotus F1 team boss Eric Lux at a nightclub that ended when Sutil sliced Lux’s neck with a champagne glass.

Sutil apologized and called the whole thing an accident, but Lux wasn’t convinced; his lawyers soon filed a legal complaint that Sutil had physically assaulted Lux. Though Force India retained its driver through the end of the year, Sutil was ultimately dropped ahead of 2012.

The case hit the courtroom on January 13, 2012, and by the end of the month, Sutil was convicted and received an 18-month suspended prison sentence and a €200,000 fine to be donated to a charity. Notably, Lewis Hamilton failed to testify in court during the trial as a key witness in defense of Sutil; the two men saw their friendship end when Sutil called Hamilton a “coward.”

After a year away from racing, Sutil was brought back into the fold at Force India for 2013, going on to score a total of 29 points for a finish of 13th in the WDC. The subsequent year, he moved to Sauber.

A dismal 2014 saw Sutil score no points and was made all the worse when his accident at Suzuka during the rain brought out the recovery vehicle that Marussia driver Jules Bianchi crashed into. Bianchi suffered a traumatic head injury, with F1 moving quickly to put new safety measures in place to prevent such a simple error from happening again.

Sadly, that was the end of Sutil’s time behind the wheel. He spent the 2015 season as a reserve driver for Williams, but he was never given a chance behind the wheel.

Since leaving Formula 1, Sutil has kept a fairly low profile. In both 2022 and 2023, he joined the Gohm Motorsport team in Ferrari Challenge Europe for a handful of events, taking home fifth in the championship in 2022 and sixth the following year.

His results can largely be attributed to two wins, as Sutil hasn’t contested a full season. His first victory came at Paul Ricard in 2022, with a win at Mugello capping off his successes.

But Sutil has also amassed an impressive hypercar collection, which includes an array of vehicles made by Koenigsegg, Pagani, Ferrari, Bugatti, Mercedes, and McLaren.

Now, keen-eyed car spotters in Monaco can spot Sutil cruising through the streets in one of his ultra-rare machines.

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