Champion crew chief Darian Grubb returns to the top of the pit box in 2018 to work with rising star and NASCAR Cup Series rookie of the year contender William Byron and the iconic No. 24 Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 team of Hendrick Motorsports.
One of the winningest active crew chiefs in NASCAR, Grubb is a well-respected talent in the garage, having earned a Cup Series championship with legendary driver Tony Stewart in 2011 and won races with some of the top drivers in the sport, including Jimmie Johnson, Denny Hamlin and Carl Edwards.
A native of Floyd, Virginia, Grubb’s passion for racing began during his teenage years growing up in a county with just one stoplight and less than 15,000 residents. While in high school, he joined his brother and a group of friends who worked on late model stock cars that competed at tracks throughout Virginia and the Carolinas. He began the old-fashioned way – hanging around the shop with his buddies on evenings and weekends to work on race cars.
After graduating from Floyd County High School, Grubb headed to Blacksburg, Virginia, where he earned a mechanical engineering degree from Virginia Tech in 1998 via a co-op program with Volvo Trucks and General Motors. By the time he graduated, Grubb had a year-and-a-half of work experience as a junior design engineer within Volvo Heavy Trucks and then with GM’s Cadillac program.
With his mechanical engineering degree in hand, Grubb returned to Volvo Trucks as a design engineer in 1998. However, he remained active in racing with his first stint as a crew chief coming in the former USAR Hooters Pro Cup Series, where in 1998 he guided driver Jeff Agnew to the rookie of the year title and season championship.
Grubb spent another year with Agnew in Pro Cup before leaving Volvo Trucks to pursue a full-time career in racing. With the sport rapidly changing in the late 1990s, there was demand for engineers like Grubb. His résumé – posted on the Internet – caught the eye of the storied Petty Enterprises team, which he joined in 2000 to work at the highest level of stock car racing, the NASCAR Cup Series.
While at Petty, Grubb helped the team develop the Dodge Intrepid, which made its NASCAR debut in 2001. He also served as the shock specialist and team engineer with the No. 43 Cup Series team and driver John Andretti through the 2002 season.
Grubb joined Hendrick Motorsports from Petty Enterprises in January 2003. He served as lead race engineer for the No. 48 Cup Series team from 2003-2006 and was interim crew chief during the first four races of its 2006 championship-winning campaign, leading driver Johnson to a pair of victories, including the prestigious Daytona 500.
Grubb earned one win as crew chief for Casey Mears in 2007 before being named engineering manager for the Nos. 5 and 88 Hendrick Motorsports teams for 2008. In 2009, he moved into a crew chief role at Stewart-Haas Racing, where in three seasons he won 11 races and the 2011 Cup championship with Stewart. Grubb then joined Joe Gibbs Racing, winning nine times with drivers Hamlin and Edwards from 2012-2015.
In January 2016, Grubb returned to Hendrick Motorsports to oversee race car manufacturing as vehicle production director. He was promoted to director of competition systems in August 2017 and one month later appointed crew chief of the No. 5 team with driver Kasey Kahne for the final nine Cup Series playoff races of 2017.
On Nov. 1, 2017, Hendrick Motorsports announced that in 2018 Grubb would lead the iconic No. 24 Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 team made famous by retired NASCAR champion Jeff Gordon. Grubb is paired with Byron, the exciting Cup Series rookie who is coming off winning the NASCAR Xfinity Series driver title in 2017.
When Grubb isn’t at the racetrack, he enjoys spending time with his family, boating, following college football and working on cars and computers.
