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Icon Sportswire\/\/Getty Images<\/p>\nA federal lawsuit filed by Joe Gibbs Racing against Chris Gabehart is accusing the NASCAR team\u2019s former competition director of attempting to steal the organization\u2019s sensitive information for a competitor, Spire Motorsports.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s departments involved in JGR\u2019s competition efforts. The suit states that Gabehart met with team owner Joe Gibbs on November 6, 2025, and requested \u201ccarte blanche authority over all racing decisions.\u201d When Gibbs declined to give Gabehart that authority, Gabehart said he preferred to leave the team rather than stay with it. <\/p>\n
Related Story<\/p>\n
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\u2019s departure from JGR that he had been meeting with Jeff Dickerson, the owner of Spire Motorsports. <\/p>\n
Icon Sportswire\/\/Getty Images<\/p>\n
Chris Gabehart.<\/p>\n
The suit states that JGR then conducted a forensic investigation of Gabehart\u2019s JGR laptop. This investigation revealed several things including:<\/p>\n
Gabehart had repeatedly conducted Google searches and online research about Spire during October and November 2025.The Google drive contained a folder titled \u201cSpire\u201d and a subfolder titled \u201cPast Setups.\u201dGabehart 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.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s racing strategy and operations.<\/p>\n
Related Story<\/p>\n
JGR contends that the trade secrets Gabehart took include:<\/p>\n
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\u2019s analytics and the processes and technologies for measuring race car performance, pit crew performance and driver performance.JGR\u2019s process, procedures, technologies used in analyzing performance of competitors\u2019 race cars and drivers.JGR\u2019s process and procedures for evaluating fuel consumption of JGR\u2019s race cars and competitors\u2019 race cars used before and during races.Base compensation for JGR\u2019s drivers.The amount of payment JGR receives from team sponsorships.<\/p>\n
In the suit, JGR requests a trial by jury, compensatory damages, and for doubled or trebled damages. <\/p>\n
![\"Headshot](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/ab5fb547-d6c6-4f76-8ab9-e276fb4103d5_1669144854.file.png\" "\\"Headshot")
<\/p>\n
Susan Wade has lived in the Seattle area for 40 years, but motorsports is in the Indianapolis native\u2019s DNA. She has emerged as one of the leading drag-racing writers with nearly 30 seasons at the racetrack, focusing on the human-interest angle. \u00a0She was the first non-NASCAR recipient of the prestigious Russ Catlin Award and has covered the sport for the Chicago Tribune, Newark Star-Ledger, and Seattle Times. She has contributed to Autoweek as a freelance writer since 2016.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A federal lawsuit filed by Joe Gibbs Racing against Chris Gabehart is accusing the NASCAR team\u2019s former competition…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":486823,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[446],"tags":[49,48,782,196048,784,1642,634,196047,82,183339],"class_list":["post-486822","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nascar","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-content-type-news","tag-contentid-213670e0-da6c-43ac-86ee-d0861520e2fb","tag-displaytype-standard-article","tag-locale-us","tag-nascar","tag-shorttitle-joe-gibbs-racing-sues-former-competition-director","tag-sports","tag-subsection-nascar"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/486822","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=486822"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/486822\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/486823"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=486822"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=486822"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=486822"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}