During the 10-race Sprint Cup chase, Carl Edwards averaged a finishing place of 4.9, better than any produced by Jimmie Johnson during his five-year championship reign from 2006 to 2010. Yet on Sunday at Homestead-Miami Speedway, averages were no substitute for victory.Tony Stewart put on a show Sunday night, passing 118 cars while whipping his car up and down the banking at Homestead-Miami Speedway. The defining moment of his third championship, though, might have been a roll of the dice and not a flick of the steering wheel.
A gasoline-stretching gambit by crew chief Darian Grubb left Stewart’s No. 14 Chevrolet sputtering but ahead of Carl Edwards— where it stayed for the duration of the Ford 400.
“We get 50 feet (from the end of pit road), and it dies,” Stewart said of his final stop in the Chase for the Sprint Cup. “I’m like, ‘We just lost this,’ and we rolled about 100 feet, and it takes off. It’s like, ‘Wow, that is the call of the race, the call of the Chase.’ “
It also likely will be the last call Grubb makes for Stewart.
In the afterglow of the tightest title battle in NASCAR history, Grubb revealed he essentially was fired two weeks after the team opened the Chase with consecutive wins.
“It is (baffling) to me, honestly,” said Grubb, who has been Stewart’s crew chief for all 108 races since the inception of Stewart-Haas Racing in 2009. He said he was told before the Oct. 15 race at Charlotte Motor Speedway that he wouldn’t be back in 2012.
“We just kept fighting. It did not change anything.”
It was a surreal and sometimes awkward scene late Sunday night as Stewart sat beside Grubb and kept emphasizing it was “people who made the difference” while facing questions why one of his team’s most important cogs was being deposed despite guiding its personnel through great duress.
“They fought like the Bad News Bears,” Stewart said. “We were the team nobody thought had a shot at the beginning, and we just kept fighting, this whole group up here. Darian has done an unbelievable job in this Chase.”
Of his record five victories in the 10-race title run, three hinged on gas mileage: Chicagoland Speedway, New Hampshire Motor Speedway and Homestead. That’s a testament to Stewart’s knack for maximizing fuel economy, but it’s also a tribute to the poker-playing skills of Grubb, whose laid-back demeanor often is the antithesis of his driver’s fiery disposition.
Stewart was effusive in praising Grubb’s impact Sunday but didn’t say whether the championship would change his mind.
“There’s a lot of decisions that have to be made,” he said. “We’ll sit down as a group this week and figure out the direction.”
There should be plenty of options for Grubb, who is expected to be replaced by Kurt Busch’s crew chief, Steve Addington. Grubb could return to Hendrick Motorsports, where he won the 2006 Daytona 500 with Jimmie Johnson as interim crew chief.
Grubb was noncommittal about returning with Stewart even if offered the chance. Their relationship took a sour turn when Stewart called out his crew as unworthy of a championship after a ninth at Michigan International Speedway in August, and Grubb said it grew “tough and strained” after he was informed of his dismissal.
“But it probably made the guys rally a little more because we all felt like we were a team to beat, and we wanted to prove that,” Grubb said. “We may have even gotten closer as a team after that.”
Said Stewart: “It definitely makes you go, ‘How did we do this?’ But at the same time, it makes it very gratifying because you are able to take a less-than-perfect scenario and have success with it. I think we are all up here going to take a lot of pride in that.”
A gasoline-stretching gambit by crew chief Darian Grubb left Stewart’s No. 14 Chevrolet sputtering but ahead of Carl Edwards— where it stayed for the duration of the Ford 400.
“We get 50 feet (from the end of pit road), and it dies,” Stewart said of his final stop in the Chase for the Sprint Cup. “I’m like, ‘We just lost this,’ and we rolled about 100 feet, and it takes off. It’s like, ‘Wow, that is the call of the race, the call of the Chase.’ “
It also likely will be the last call Grubb makes for Stewart.
In the afterglow of the tightest title battle in NASCAR history, Grubb revealed he essentially was fired two weeks after the team opened the Chase with consecutive wins.
“It is (baffling) to me, honestly,” said Grubb, who has been Stewart’s crew chief for all 108 races since the inception of Stewart-Haas Racing in 2009. He said he was told before the Oct. 15 race at Charlotte Motor Speedway that he wouldn’t be back in 2012.
“We just kept fighting. It did not change anything.”
It was a surreal and sometimes awkward scene late Sunday night as Stewart sat beside Grubb and kept emphasizing it was “people who made the difference” while facing questions why one of his team’s most important cogs was being deposed despite guiding its personnel through great duress.
“They fought like the Bad News Bears,” Stewart said. “We were the team nobody thought had a shot at the beginning, and we just kept fighting, this whole group up here. Darian has done an unbelievable job in this Chase.”
Of his record five victories in the 10-race title run, three hinged on gas mileage: Chicagoland Speedway, New Hampshire Motor Speedway and Homestead. That’s a testament to Stewart’s knack for maximizing fuel economy, but it’s also a tribute to the poker-playing skills of Grubb, whose laid-back demeanor often is the antithesis of his driver’s fiery disposition.
Stewart was effusive in praising Grubb’s impact Sunday but didn’t say whether the championship would change his mind.
“There’s a lot of decisions that have to be made,” he said. “We’ll sit down as a group this week and figure out the direction.”
There should be plenty of options for Grubb, who is expected to be replaced by Kurt Busch’s crew chief, Steve Addington. Grubb could return to Hendrick Motorsports, where he won the 2006 Daytona 500 with Jimmie Johnson as interim crew chief.
Grubb was noncommittal about returning with Stewart even if offered the chance. Their relationship took a sour turn when Stewart called out his crew as unworthy of a championship after a ninth at Michigan International Speedway in August, and Grubb said it grew “tough and strained” after he was informed of his dismissal.
“But it probably made the guys rally a little more because we all felt like we were a team to beat, and we wanted to prove that,” Grubb said. “We may have even gotten closer as a team after that.”
Said Stewart: “It definitely makes you go, ‘How did we do this?’ But at the same time, it makes it very gratifying because you are able to take a less-than-perfect scenario and have success with it. I think we are all up here going to take a lot of pride in that.”
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