Who Was Kimi Raikkonen’s Crew Chief – NASCAR Winner With Hendrick Motorsports Legend Jimmie Johnson

2007 F1 champion Kimi Raikkonen recently made his NASCAR Cup Series debut. The Finnish veteran had the honor of being the first driver to kick-start Trackhouse Racing’s Project 91.

Of course, every NASCAR driver has a crew chief to help them during a race, and Raikkonen was no exception. For the Cup race at Watkins Glen, the 42-year-old partnered with crew chief Darian Grubb.

For the uninitiated, Grubb is a highly decorated NASCAR mechanic, engineer, and crew chief. The 46-year-old has worked with some of the biggest NASCAR teams in his career. This includes Hendrick Motorsports, Stewart-Haas Racing, Joe Gibbs Racing, and Chip Ganassi Racing.

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He has even worked with Hendrick Motorsports in two separate stints.

What accolades do Kimi Raikkonen and Darian Grubb have?

As mentioned before, Raikkonen is the 2007 Formula One world champion. He is also Ferrari’s latest F1 champion unless Charles Leclerc can do something to about that statistic. The Finnish driver is also the only F1 driver to ever take a race win with three different engine specifications, V10, V8, and V6 Turbo.

As for Grubb, he worked with Hendrick Motorsports between 2003 and 2008. During that time period, he was the crew chief for Jimmie Johnson and guided him to victory at the 2006 Daytona 500.

Later on, from 2009 onwards, he joined Stewart-Haas Racing until 2011. In 2011, he helped guide Tony Stewart to his third and final Cup Series title.

For the 2012 NASCAR Cup Season, Grubb jumped ship to Joe Gibbs Racing and partnered with Denny Hamlin. In his tenure, he also became the crew chief for Carl Edwards in the 2015 season. Beyond that, he rejoined Hendrick Motorsports from 2016 until the 2020 season. In this particular stint, he was the crew chief for Kasey Kahne in 2017.

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Grubb was also supposed to be William Byron’s crew chief in 2018. However, he soon moved to a technical director position at Hendrick Motorsports for that year. Finally, he joined Chip Ganassi Racing for the 2021 season and joined Trackhouse Racing when CGR left the sport at the end of the 2021 season.