Grubb enjoying the top with Stewart

LONG POND, Pa. (AP) — Darian Grubb made his first good move when he decided to leave the Hendrick Motorsports powerhouse to join Tony Stewart’s first-year team.

His decisions as Stewart’s crew chief have been just about as good.

Once seemingly content to work behind the scenes at Hendrick, Grubb has helped boost Stewart-Haas Racing into an instant Cup contender.

Grubb was on top of his game at Pocono Raceway, directing Stewart to his first win as driver/owner with a series of instructions designed to help the points leader conserve fuel and show just how much faith they had in each other.

“You have to trust the guy that’s on that box making the calls for you,” Stewart said.

He believes in no one right now more than Grubb.

“We didn’t know how we were going to work together at Daytona when we got there,” Stewart said. “It was literally a week-to-week deal, and that’s the approach we’ve had from Day 1.”

Grubb had only limited experience as a crew chief working for Hendrick, but a pretty good winning percentage when he was running the show. He was crew chief for Casey Mears in 2007 and led him to his only career Cup victory with a win in the marquee Coca-Cola 600. Grubb also ably filled in for Chad Knaus, leading Jimmie Johnson to two wins during his crew chief’s four-race suspension.

When Grubb moved back to an engineering job with Hendrick last season, he believed his days of sitting atop the pit box were numbered.

Hendrick dominated the series with its drivers at least a threat to win every week, and he played a role in Johnson’s third straight Cup title.

“I was not planning to be a crew chief at all,” Grubb said. “I was very happy where I was at with Hendrick Motorsports. We were on top of the game.”

Stewart, a two-time Cup champion, took notice.

When Stewart was assembling his team, he wanted to hire some of the best people he knew to make it a title contender. So he went after Grubb with a simple sales pitch: Come join me and build a contending team and a lasting program from the ground up. That piqued Grubb’s interest enough to discuss the job with Stewart.

“It’s kind of hard not to get chill bumps from that and say, ’Hmm, do I really want to do that?”’ Grubb said. “He wanted to go out and he wanted to build a team to win races and championships.”

Grubb liked what he heard. The shot at facilitating the Stewart-Haas Racing team from the outset was enough for him to give up his comfortable job at Hendrick.