ESPN Sprint Cup

CONCORD, N.C. -- Dale Earnhardt Jr. and crew chief Tony Eury Jr. are in the back of the No. 88 hauler talking about setups and lines to take in the upcoming race. Ideas are bouncing off the walls like cars at Darlington Raceway. Controlled chaos, one might say.

In steps team engineer Darian Grubb.

"He's a great voice of reason and that's really comforting to me," Earnhardt said. "Me and Tony Jr. sit in that trailer up there and talk and talk and talk. We sometimes talk in circles and get off the path a little bit.

"He's great to sort of go, 'Hey, guys, you were right here and thinking that and maybe we shouldn't try what you're thinking there,' Just very smart, very experienced, has a lot of knowledge and experience to lean on."

Grubb has been an integral part of the transition for Eury and Earnhardt into Hendrick Motorsports. He's a big reason NASCAR's most popular driver is off to one of the most consistent starts of his Sprint Cup career with nine top-10s and only one finish worse than 15th in 12 races.

"He sort of has a calming effect on the group," Earnhardt said.

Grubb, who coordinates engineering between the teams of Earnhardt and Casey Mears, easily could be running the show. He was Mears' crew chief last season, helping the young driver to his first career win and a record 10 top-10s.

In 2006, he was the interim crew chief for eventual champion Jimmie Johnson after Chad Knaus was suspended for the first six races. During that span Johnson won twice, including the Daytona 500, and had five top-10s.

Grubb had such a calming effect then that there was speculation he might replace Knaus, whose workaholic energy at times created stress.

"He was a really good combination for Chad and I because Chad can get real excited and his emotions kind of get him from time to time, and that's something that Darian never has happen with him," Johnson said.

"He's a very, very smart guy, and he could really be a good balancing act inside the front of the truck when we're trying to sort out setups on the car and direction we need to go because he never got fired up about anything."

Grubb said that's just a product of growing up in the backwoods of Virginia, working with his father in construction.

"I was taught everything has a different face in life and you have to make your decisions based on that," he said. "I'm just a methodical thinker."

Team player
Grubb didn't think twice when team owner Rick Hendrick approached him last season about stepping out of the crew chief limelight and working behind the scenes with Earnhardt's team.

In a garage where egos are larger than engine blocks, Grubb is the exception.

"There is no ego at all for me," Grubb said. "I always sit back and think about what it would be like if I had to get a real job. People don't understand, there's a lot of time in this. You actually have to love the sport, and your family has to love it and you have to get along.

"If my ego got involved in it, what would I do if I was outside the sport?"

That's why Grubb didn't balk when asked to go back to Knaus' right-hand man in 2006, why he didn't think twice when Hendrick asked him to go help Eury.

Hendrick calls Grubb one of the most respected voices in an organization that is one of the most respected in NASCAR.

"We've asked Darian to shoulder more responsibility and take another step," Hendrick said when he made the offseason switch. "With all the challenges and difficult situations we've thrown his way, he has always proven to be successful.

"Darian is a star in our organization, and his contributions will be vital to our future success."

Four-time Cup champion Jeff Gordon, who benefited from Grubb's experience when he worked in the 24-48 shop, agreed.

"Darian is awesome," he said. "He's a great engineer and he's got good common sense as well. He's really calm and even-mannered. He's knowledgeable and he has experience from a championship team, so that's always beneficial."

Grubb, 32, was born in Floyd, Va. He began working in racing as a teenager on the Late Model level, then went to Virginia Tech in 1993 to earn a degree in mechanical engineering.

He moved into NASCAR in 2000 when Petty Enterprises hired him to assist with the development of the Dodge Intrepid. He spent three years there before joining HMS as an engineer for Johnson.

Grubb said his experience in Late Models gave him more in common with Eury than most would expect.

"He knows the old-school application of racing," he said. "That's the way he learned it and, honestly, the way I learned it. That's why we work well together.

"We can comment and talk about it, and it gives us a fallback and helps us work with the other departments within the organization."

Grubb said Eury has been like a breath of fresh air coming to an organization in which most of the talent is developed within.

"Just to have that new perspective and be able to show him all the tools and how we use them, it's been a learning experience for myself and the group as a whole," he said. "We almost have to train him on the way we work, and he tells us how he would look at things, so we see everything in a different perspective.

"It's made us all a little smarter."

Different side of Junior
Grubb leaned against the inside of the No. 88 hauler and thought about the difference between working with Earnhardt as opposed to Johnson or Mears.

"There's definitely more of a cult fan following," he said. "Other than that, we don't see it any different."

But Grubb definitely sees Earnhardt differently than what he, from a distance, imagined the son of seven-time champion Dale Earnhardt would be like.

"His outside view, he seems like the good ol' boy, but he's a very intellectual individual," he said. "You can carry on a conversation about anything. He knows about the world events. It's just amazing to sit there and watch him read the paper and talk about politics and business.

"It's a whole different perspective people don't get to see."

Adjusting to Earnhardt's needs as a driver have been much easier than expected. Grubb said Earnhardt and Johnson have "eerily similar" driving styles and likes and dislikes about the car.

"Just the vocabulary is different," he said. "Junior is more down-home. It's one of those things where you chuckle at the moment when he says something. Junior has the application of tractors and dump trucks, where Jimmie might talk about dirt bikes and off-road trucks."

Being in the circus that follows Earnhardt hasn't been as bad as Grubb thought. That he keeps to himself a lot and spends much of his free time away from the track with his wife, Yolanda, who travels a lot with the team, helps keeps things sane.

But Grubb can't wait to get Earnhardt, who hasn't won in more than two years, his first win at HMS. He expects it to be as big as winning the 500 with Johnson and helping Mears collect his first win at Charlotte a year ago.

"We feel like we should have won four or five races," Grubb said. "We've had the performance to run up front all year, and as long as we continue to do that, we'll run for a championship."

Eury likes having Grubb around. He's always bouncing ideas off him and he knows if something happens to him -- as it did a year ago when he was suspended for six races by NASCAR -- he has a more-than-capable replacement on the pit box.

"I told him to be ready in October in case I get suspended because I want to go deer hunting and I want him to be ready," Eury said with a laugh. "I told him I wasn't going to do nothing wrong until October. [In] October, anything can happen because I love to deer hunt."

And Grubb loves to step in wherever he can to help.

"I'm a little bit of a jack-of-all-trades," he said. "Whatever Mr. Hendrick asks me to do, I'll do it."

David Newton covers NASCAR for ESPN.com. He can be reached at dnewtonespn@aol.com.