Veteran race engineer Mark Slade has left the Haas Formula 1 team on the eve of Kevin Magnussen’s final race in Abu Dhabi.
Slade was still looking after Magnussen last weekend in Qatar, but he is not at the Yas Circuit, and is understood to have cut his ties with the team. Haas declined to comment on the situation.
Slade will be replaced this weekend by head of performance engineering Dominic Haines, who used to be a race engineer for Romain Grosjean and others before stepping back into a more factory-based role.
He was due to be in Abu Dhabi anyway for the upcoming test, but is now running Magnussen this weekend.
Slade brought a wealth of experience gained with McLaren, Renault and Mercedes to Haas when he joined in September 2022.
He started at McLaren in 1991, and over 18 years with the Woking outfit he worked in a variety of engineering roles, notably with Mika Hakkinen, David Coulthard and Kimi Raikkonen, including during the latter’s two title near misses in 2003 and 2005.
He moved to Renault for the 2010 season but then switched to Mercedes in 2011 to engineer Michael Schumacher, assisted by Lewis Hamilton’s current engineer, Peter Bonnington.
However he again stayed for only one season before moving back to Renault in 2012. He stayed with the Enstone team through the Lotus years, when he was reunited with Raikkonen.
In 2017-’19 he ran Nico Hulkenberg. His last trackside role with Renault was running Esteban Ocon in 2020, before a reshuffle at the end of the season. He subsequently left the team, and was on the sidelines for a while before he joined Haas.
Slade is highly regarded by drivers with whom he’s formed a close bond, such as Heikki Kovalainen, who worked with him at McLaren in 2008 and 2009 and again briefly at Lotus in 2013.
“I think having Mark Slade as my engineer was a significant factor,” the Finn told this writer in 2022. “It was relatively easy to start working with him [at Lotus] because I knew him from McLaren days, and I knew how he works.
“He knew what I needed as well. If I got lost he could actually make suggestions just by looking at the telemetry, so it was really helpful. I had a good time at McLaren with him and he’s worked with some really good drivers, and he’s obviously a great engineer.”
