One of Red Bull’s most legendary Formula 1 employees has told the team he intends to leave. It is a blow to Max Verstappen as the staff member in question is Ole Schack, who has worked for the team since before Red Bull even bought it more than 20 years ago and who has spent recent years working as a key figure in the Dutchman’s side of the garage.

Schack is a front-end mechanic on Verstappen’s car but his overall affiliation with Red Bull has been so long-term that the Dutchman was just a child when he first began to work for the Milton Keynes-based outfit. Schack, from Denmark, worked with teams in junior motorsport series in the early 2000s until he landed a job with the Jaguar Racing F1 test team.

Jaguar was then bought out by Red Bull later that year and Schack was moved to the race team to work on David Coulthard’s car. He later served as a mechanic for Sebastian Vettel during the German’s run of four consecutive world championship wins, and has done so for Verstappen as the Dutchman matched that total.

Remarkably, even now in the era of 24 races per season, Schack has attended every single Grand Prix since the start of that 2005 season. Since Christian Horner‘s departure last summer, he is the only trackside member of the team that can boast a perfect attendance record throughout Red Bull’s time in F1.

But his run is set to come to an end later this year after Schack informed Red Bull that he intends to leave the team. According to PlanetF1, the changes made within the outfit since Horner’s departure are a contributory factor to his decision. Schack’s exact departure date has yet to be decided.

He is the latest in a growing line of long-serving staff members who have left or decided to leave Red Bull in the last 12 months. Chief designer Craig Skinner has resigned while the Caller twins who also work on Verstappen’s car have decided to look elsewhere. Matt Caller has already begun work at Audi while Jon Caller is yet to leave, but is said to have informed the team that he will be exiting.

After Horner’s departure last July, communications chief Paul Smith and head of marketing Oliver Hughes were also axed by Red Bull’s parent company. And in February, before the new season began, another round of departures was confirmed with HR director Joanna Fleet, partnerships director Julia George, group marketing director Simon Smith-Wright and senior communications manager Alice Hedworth also departing.

Hedworth did not work directly with Verstappen as she worked primarily with his team-mates – initially Sergio Perez and then Liam Lawson and Yuki Tsunoda last year. Verstappen’s communications manager, Anna Webster, continues to work with the Dutchman at races and official events.