Joe Gibbs Racing Sues Former Competition Director Chris Gabehart

A federal lawsuit filed by Joe Gibbs Racing against Chris Gabehart is accusing the NASCAR team’s former competition director of attempting to steal the organization’s sensitive information for a competitor, Spire Motorsports.

In the suit filed Thursday in US District Court in Charlotte, North Carolina, JGR maintains that Gabehart breached his contract. The suit stated that during the 2025 season, Gabehart became dissatisfied with his position and wanted control over all of the team’s departments involved in JGR’s competition efforts. The suit states that Gabehart met with team owner Joe Gibbs on November 6, 2025, and requested “carte blanche authority over all racing decisions.” When Gibbs declined to give Gabehart that authority, Gabehart said he preferred to leave the team rather than stay with it.

On November 10, 2025, JGR presented Gabehart with a proposed separation agreement. In the suit, it said the terms would have allowed Gabehart to work for another NASCAR team, provided that he agreed not to solicit key employees and contractors and that he returned JGR equipment and information. The suit states that JGR learned in the days following Gabehart’s departure from JGR that he had been meeting with Jeff Dickerson, the owner of Spire Motorsports.

The suit states that JGR then conducted a forensic investigation of Gabehart’s JGR laptop. This investigation revealed several things including:

• Gabehart had repeatedly conducted Google searches and online research about Spire during October and November 2025.
• The Google drive contained a folder titled “Spire” and a subfolder titled “Past Setups.”
• Gabehart possessed more than a dozen photos of the screen of his JGR laptop taken on November 7, 2025. The photos contained images of JGR files that had confidential information and trade secrets.

The suit states that JGR learned on February 11, 2026, that Gabehart planned to become the chief motorsports officer at Spire where he would be responsible for all of Spire’s racing strategy and operations.

JGR contends that the trade secrets Gabehart took include:

• Technical information regarding race car setups, the technology JGR uses to run simulations to determine the most advantageous race car setups, and the results of those simulations.
• JGR’s analytics and the processes and technologies for measuring race car performance, pit crew performance and driver performance.
• JGR’s process, procedures, technologies used in analyzing performance of competitors’ race cars and drivers.
• JGR’s process and procedures for evaluating fuel consumption of JGR’s race cars and competitors’ race cars used before and during races.
• Base compensation for JGR’s drivers.
• The amount of payment JGR receives from team sponsorships.

In the suit, JGR requests a trial by jury, compensatory damages, and for doubled or trebled damages.