I would not remove that diode. I believe it serves the same purpose as the freewheels on the motor controller. Going back to basics, the voltage across an inductor is relative to di/dt... so when i goes from 10A to 0A in .000001seconds, you get a LOT of voltage. Again, synchronous rectification would be smart here, but i'm sure this is fine.
The resistor might be there to set up the Vds biasing... not sure (mostly slept through mosfet class
)