Tony Stewart, days after winning his third NASCAR Sprint Cup Championship in Miami, wound down his two-day media blitz at ESPN’s Connecticut campus and in New York before heading back to Stewart-Haas Racing (SHR) headquarters in North Carolina Tuesday where he plans to meet later in the day with his management team. Front and center on the agenda will be the status of Darian Grubb, crew chief on Stewart’s winning car.
Grubb has served as the only crew chief Stewart has had in the three years he has been a co-owner/driver for SHR and he guided Stewart to the Sprint Cup Championship Sunday after the team won its fifth race in the ten Chase races. As the team celebrated, however, Grubb confirmed that he had been told weeks earlier that he would not be returning as crew chief on Stewart’s No. 14 Office Depot/Mobil 1 Chevrolet.
Rumors have circulated through the NASCAR garage in recent weeks that Steve Addington would leave his crew chief position with Penske Racing and Kurt Busch to join Stewart. The rumors escalated when Penske Racing announced Tuesday that Addington would not return to that organization next year.
Stewart was asked during a teleconference with NASCAR media representatives Tuesday afternoon if he is interested in Addington being his crew chief or if he has changed his mind about Grubb.
“We're looking at all of our options right now,” Stewart said. “After we get through with all the media obligations today, I'll get to go back to the shop and we'll sit down as a group and try to come up with a decision and figure (it) out.
“We already know some options that are available, and we'll try to sit down and see what we think is the best option and decision for the company.”
Also on the SHR personnel list will be a new competition director, a position that has been vacant at the organization since June and a crew chief for Danica Patrick, who will drive ten races in 2012 for the team before running a full schedule in 2013. Stewart had hoped to be able to hire a full-time crew for Patrick and fill in the other weekends with a part-time driver but no announcement has been made as to whether sponsorship has been secured to make that possible.
“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.”
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