Why drivers shouldn't be managed by friends

"I'll probably wave at him when I go to lap him next year."

Max Verstappen's response last year to news of Daniel Ricciardo's move to Renault was short, succinct - and, unfortunately for the likeable Australian, decidedly prescient.

Whatever the sporting wisdom of quitting Red Bull for Renault, there was no doubting that the financial terms of his new agreement were good, reportedly giving the joyful Australian twenty million more reasons to smile.

Stepping into a car unlikely to add to his record of seven grand prix victories any time
soon, Ricciardo will have had to reset his expectations ahead of this season, although perhaps not to the extent of merely battling for points rather than podiums.

Any personal despondency caused by Renault's difficult 2019 season will have been amplified by the £10m court case launched against Ricciardo by former advisor Glenn Beavis in July. This kind of legal mess is always best avoided, but it is a fact of racing drivers' lives that they can find themselves embroiled in expensive and distracting disputes against managers appointed by them in earlier times.

Jenson Button found himself in an unhappy management situation in the mid-2000s. Russell King, a partner in the agency concerned, later gained infamy as the subject of a BBC Panorama investigation entitled 'The Trillion Dollar Con Man'. King was sentenced to a second jail term of six years in May 2019, and Jenson will no doubt look back with relief at having extricated himself from that relationship as early as he did.

Finding the right representation is never an easy task, especially when young racing drivers sign their lives away to those who happen to be helping them in lower formulae. The father-as-manager route is also common, as with Lewis and Anthony Hamilton, while the mate-as-manager is another common mode.

It's all very well having a buddy giving advice when you're racing in Formula Renault, but when you reach Formula 1 and that same person is asking for big chunk of change in return for carrying your bags, reality bites.

Beavis came to the attention of many during Netflix's Drive to Survive series, appearing in Episode 4 as Ricciardo's 'advisor'. During what seemed to me to be a staged-for-the-cameras meeting, the two discussed Ricciardo's future, and Beavis said, "We're in the privileged position of having more than one option."

The use of the first person plural underlined the relationship at the time, but between the announcement of the lucrative Renault deal on August 3rd and the end of last year, Ricciardo determined to move on. To coin a phrase, hell hath no fury like an advisor scorned, so Beavis is claiming 20% of his former client's Renault income.

It's a salutary tale of friendships and professional relationships blurred. Whether a Rolex watch is a personal gift or the commission on a deal is the kind of detail that matters. When gaps are left, misunderstandings take over and can escalate into something more unpleasant.

In the meantime Ricciardo has joined CAA Sports, the management company which looks after stars including Cristiano Ronaldo and Nico Rosberg, and also holds the global sponsorship rights to Formula 1 itself. It will no doubt aid him in deciding whether to settle the Beavis case in order to avoid a protracted legal battle or, in true Honey Badger mode, continue a fierce defence in the face of what Ricciardo sees as a shake-down by a disgruntled former advisor.