Darian Grubb, crew chief of Tony Stewart’s No. 14 Office Depot/Mobil 1 Chevrolet, celebrated Stewart-Haas Racing’s first Sprint Cup Championship Sunday in Miami and then confirmed that he has been told he is without a job. Grubb led the team to five wins in the ten-race championship run including an exciting win Sunday over Carl Edwards.
Grubb said he had been told weeks ago that he would not be returning to his crew chief position at SHR but he had refused to talk about the situation until the 2011 season was over Sunday. Grubb said SHR management would meet this week to discuss his situation.
The team has also been without a competition director since summer and has yet to announce a new crew chief for Danica Patrick, who will run a partial schedule for the team in 2012 and a full schedule in 2013.
Stewart captured his third career NASCAR Sprint Cup Series championship with a victory in Sunday’s Ford 400 at Homestead-Miami Speedway with Grubb making sound pit calls throughout a day filled with many challenges, including early damage to the car.
Stewart, co-owner of SHR with Gene Haas, is the first driver-owner to claim the championship since Alan Kulwicki in 1992. The 2011 season is the third under the current ownership and Stewart has made the Chase each year.
Stewart failed to win a single race during the 26-race regular season, however, and his frustration level was high when he said his team did not deserve a spot in the Chase. He narrowly made the post-season but won the first two races of the Chase, at Chicagoland Speedway and New Hampshire Motor Speedway. He ultimately won five times including the season finale to secure the championship.
“It is (baffling) to me, honestly,” Grubb said after he helped Stewart win the NASCAR Sprint Cup title Sunday. “I'm not sure what's going to happen. But I was told early in the Chase before Charlotte that next year I was not going to be here. We just kept fighting and doing everything we had to do every week. It did not change anything, what the outcome was going to be. We fought as if we were going to fight to win this championship, and we did it, and now we'll just see in this coming week how things change.”
Grubb said he is not sure if the door is still open for him to remain at Stewart-Haas. “I had a lot of conversations with a lot of people, telling them, please give me the courtesy of waiting until tonight to see what we could accomplish. And now that we have done that, I guess we'll start talking, but we'll do a little celebrating first.”
“Originally I always wanted to stay within the organization,” Grubb said. “That's the reason I came here was to help build something special. I think we have done that. We made the Chase all three years and had a shot at winning the championship all three years, and now this year, being able to pull it off, we accomplished our goals and that's what we wanted to do. As far as time line, I'll let you know later. We are just going to plan to celebrate, talk, see what happens from there.”
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