There’s still 45 days left until the Daytona 500, yet Darian Grubb is already “absolutely impressed” with William Byron despite not having been to a track with him yet.

Grubb, 42, was named the crew chief of Byron’s No. 24 Chevrolet in November. When the green flag drops on the season in February, it will be the Grubb’s first as a crew chief for a rookie driver.

Grubb appeared on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio’s “Tradin’ Paint” Thursday to discuss how his Hendrick Motorsports’ team has prepared to help the 20-year-old reigning Xfinity Series champion in his first foray into Cup racing.

“He’s one of the hardest working guys I’ve met so far, to be able at that age, have that kind of focus in what he’s trying to do,” Grubb said. “He knows what his goals are and what he wants to accomplish. He’s been a phenomenal talent on the race track, and now from what I’ve seen behind the scenes here in the shop and working with the crew guys and getting to know people, he’s doing everything it’s going to take to make sure he has that performance.”

Byron enters 2018 having won 11 NASCAR races in the last two years – seven victories in the Camping World Truck Series and four in his Xfinity title campaign.

He’s paired with Grubb, who has 23 Cup wins in 295 races as a crew chief, including the 2006 Daytona 500 as an interim crew chief for Jimmie Johnson. Grubb won the 2011 championship as crew chief for Tony Stewart.

Grubb returns full-time to a crew chief role for the first time since 2015 with Carl Edwards at Joe Gibbs Racing. In 2016, he rejoined Hendrick as the vehicle production director. Last August, he was promoted to director of competition systems. In September, he was made the interim crew chief for Kasey Kahne for the final nine races of the year.

Kahne’s No. 5 team has now transformed into the new No. 24 team.

“I’m really excited about getting (Byron) on the race track and kind of let him refocus his efforts towards the track instead of having to do all the preparation and making sure he’s ready and … let him actually enjoy the fruits of that labor,” Grubb said.

That work includes frequent visits to the General Motors simulator located near Charlotte. That mode of preparation is not foreign to Byron, whose racing origins are in iRacing, an online simulator game.

“He’s able to actually take our setups and our race car, our aero performance, suspension settings and all these other things and go testing,” Grubb said. “We can go test there just like we can at a race track. Obviously the feel is not exactly the same, but we are learning some things as we go through.

“He spent enough time in there with the Xfinity program with JR Motorsports and our chassis and everything that we’re very familiar already with his style and what he’s doing. We’re thinking we can apply a lot of these things at the race track.”

While Grubb and his team may be familiar with Byron’s style, they have no “preconceived notions” about what he likes in a Cup car. The fact that Chevrolet is introducing its Camaro model to Cup and there are new ride height rules make deducing that even harder.

“There’s not a lot really that transfers over (from last year),” Grubb told SiriusXM NASCAR Radio. “Everything is kind of fresh and new … We’re kind of putting together in our own heads what we think is best and how we’re going to handle the new ride height rules and the performance of the race car on track. For us, it’s more about we do have a new body, we’ve got to check for fender clearances and the travel of the race car and all those things. Then can we do pit stops once we do that? How do we manage getting tires out of the fenders and everything with the car being so low.”

Byron has five restrictor-plate starts and one win in the last two years. But he’ll arrive at Daytona with new spotter in Tab Boyd.

Boyd joins Hendrick Motorsports and the No. 24 team after previously spotting for Joey Logano.

The pair is already working on their chemistry. Grubb said Byron plans to be on the spotter’s stand with Boyd to watch the Feb. 11 Advance Auto Parts Clash since Byron is not in that exhibition race.

“They’re already going to sit down and review video and just kind of see how those scenarios of runs develop,” Grubb said. “It’s different from what he’s run in Xfinity cars from what we’re going to have in a Cup car. It’s a lot to learn and the more you pick up in the data and what you can see and what you think you can learn, then you can go out there and practice and try to apply those scenarios.”