Danica Patrick’s crew chief drops ‘interim’ label

The “interim” title has been removed and Daniel Knost will remain Danica Patrick’s crew chief for 2015, Stewart-Haas Racing confirmed Monday.

Knost served as Patrick’s crew chief for the final three races of the 2014 season, recording finishes of 36th, 22nd and 18th. He had begun the year paired with Kurt Busch, with the two scoring a victory in March at Martinsville Speedway.

But Knost, a first-year crew chief with an engineering background, and Busch, a driver who prefers an old-school approach, lacked chemistry and in October, SHR announced the crews of Patrick and Busch would switch. Patrick’s crew chief, Tony Gibson, moved permanently to a similar role on Busch’s No. 41 team, while Knost was named the interim crew chief for Patrick, with a decision to be made at a later date.

Despite good rapport with Gibson and some encouraging results, Patrick has stated she would prefer a more engineer-minded crew chief, a description Knost fits. She spoke positively about Knost in an interview with al.com Sunday while acting as grand marshal for the GoDaddy Bowl in Mobile, Ala.

“Everybody at Stewart-Haas has been working very hard to make sure that every team is as good from top to bottom as possible, and we’ll probably have some changes for next year within the team, but it’s like I said, you never know what you can have until you dare to try something different,” Patrick said. “Daniel is a very smart guy and I’m excited to see what we can do.”