Darian Grubb remains unsure about his future as Tony Stewart's crew chief this year and doesn't rule out leaving Stewart-Haas Racing altogether.
Grubb has been in charge of the No. 14 team since the squad was established, making the move from Hendrick Motorsports, where he had already won races as crew chief when sporadically taking on the role.
On Sunday, following the season finale when his team clinched the title after Stewart won the race, Grubb confirmed that a few weeks ago he had been told he wouldn't remain in his position beyond this year. He said his status still remains uncertain despite having won his first championship as a crew chief.
"I'm not sure what's going to happen," said Grubb. "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 revealed he told others interested in his services to wait for a word from him following the season finale as he was keeping his focus on the championship battle. When asked if the positive outcome of Sunday's title decider for his team would change his boss' mind regarding his position, Grubb said it remains to be seen what will come out of having achieved their ultimate goal.
"It all depends," he said. "We'll just have to do those talks this week and see what happens. Obviously this is what I came in to do as a goal, and now I've done that with this team. It's not anything that I did specifically. It's not anything that Tony did. It's not anything that Gene did. It's the entire group as a whole.
"We went out and earned this championship. Now we'll just see what comes out of that."
Stewart was non-committal when asked if there was a chance of Grubb returning next season and said decisions would likely be made this week.
"There's a lot of things in the off-season and decisions that have to be made," said Stewart. "Obviously, we wanted to get through this championship battle first, and we'll sit down as a group, this week, and figure out the direction of our program."
If Grubb was to leave Stewart-Haas, the Sprint Cup champions would be looking at filling at least two positions as the team has yet to name a competition director, following Bobby Hutchens' departure last summer. On Tuesday, Penske Racing announced that Steven Addington, crew chief for Kurt Busch, is leaving that team – igniting speculation about the role being one of Grubb's options for next year.