Lewis Hamilton has officially been scratched off his former friend Adrian Sutil’s Christmas card list after the F1 driver was unable to show up for a trial as a witness, which saw Sutil being served with an 18-month suspended sentence and fined 200,000 euros.

Sutil was found guilty of causing grievous bodily harm in a Munich court, by breaking a champagne flute over Eric Lux, chief executive of Lotus team owners Genii Capital in a Shangai nightclub where he was celebrating Hamilton’s victory in the Chinese Grand Prix last April.

Hamilton had been asked to give evidence on the first day of the trial, but declared himself unavailable. His lawyer let the court know last week that he was unavailable due to a prior engagement with McLaren.

But Sutil was not having any of it and said

Lewis is a coward. I do not want to be friends with someone like that. He is for me no man. Even his father sent me a text message and wished me luck for the process. Lewis came with nothing. He has changed his phone number. I could not reach him any more

Oh dear, looks like Lewis is going to have to find another buddy to have sleepovers with.