The lawsuit was filed Thursday<\/a> in U.S. District Court in the Western District of North Carolina. JGR is based in Huntersville, N.C.<\/p>\nJGR alleges Gabehart, 44, sought additional authority over the course of the 2025 season and \u201cbecame dissatisfied with his position as competition director at JGR\u201d and \u201cwanted complete responsibility and control over all departments supporting JGR\u2019s competition efforts instead of working with other departments supporting JGR\u2019s competition efforts as a peer.\u201d<\/p>\n
After team owner Joe Gibbs rebuffed Gabehart\u2019s desire for greater control, alleging Gabehart wanted \u201ccarte blanche authority over all racing decisions,\u201d Gabehart informed the company he wished to leave. The two sides began working on an \u201camicable separation,\u201d with Nov. 10, 2025, marking Gabehart\u2019s last day with the team, at which time JGR confiscated Gabehart\u2019s computer and conducted a forensic analysis \u2014 standard JGR protocol when an employee leaves the company.<\/p>\n
The lawsuit alleges that during the forensics analysis, JGR learned Gabehart, who as competition director had access to confidential information involving nearly every facet of the competition side, had accessed proprietary information, including beyond his realm, and used his personal cell phone \u201cto take photos of his laptop screen in order to conceal that he was accessing and taking JGR\u2019s confidential information and trade secrets.\u201d<\/p>\n
According to the lawsuit, Gabehart accessed this information on Nov. 7, 2025, a day after meeting with Gibbs and proposing he oversee all aspects of competition for JGR, which Gibbs denied.<\/p>\n
Further forensics analysis by JGR, according to the lawsuit, showed Gabehart had been in regular communication with Spire co-owner Jeff Dickerson, and they had met in person. Additionally, Gabehart\u2019s personal Google Drive had a folder titled \u201cSpire\u201d and a subfolder titled \u201cPast Setups.\u201d The lawsuit claims Gabehart conducted \u201cGoogle searches and online research about Spire\u201d in October and November of 2025.<\/p>\n
During the forensics, JGR alleges that Gabehart took photos of \u201ccomplete team payroll details including job titles, contract length, annual compensation, incentive compensation, and compensation plans for prior years; driver pay for the 2025 and 2026 NASCAR seasons; Revenues from sponsors, partners, and other business arrangements for the 2024, 2025, and 2026 NASCAR seasons.\u201d<\/p>\n
On Dec. 17, 2025, Gabehart told JGR that Spire had offered him a position within that team, though the role would be different from that of a competition director. On Feb. 11, 2026, JGR learned Gabehart had taken the position as Spire\u2019s chief motorsports officer, a role in which he would be responsible for all of Spire\u2019s racing strategy and operations \u2014 something JGR contends is similar to his role as its competition director.<\/p>\n
A week after learning of Gabehart\u2019s official position at Spire, JGR filed its lawsuit and is seeking a \u201cjudgment against (Gabehart) in an amount to be determined at the trial of this action and presently believed to exceed $8,000,000 for compensatory and other damages, doubled damages, and attorneys\u2019 fees.\u201d<\/p>\n
Spire is not named as a defendant in the lawsuit, and JGR is not requesting\u00a0an injunction preventing Gabehart from working for Spire.<\/p>\n
Attempts by The Athletic to reach Gabehart were unsuccessful.<\/p>\n
Gabehart was appointed JGR competition director in November 2024. Before that, he had served as crew chief for JGR driver Denny Hamlin from 2019-2024. Gabehart started with JGR in 2012. He is considered one of the top minds within the NASCAR garage, renowned for his leadership.<\/p>\n
While he was Hamlin\u2019s crew chief, Gabehart led Hamlin to 22 wins, including two Daytona 500s. Hamlin\u2019s No. 11 team qualified for the Championship 4 playoff finale three times and finished fifth or better in points in five of six years. Hamlin\u2019s wins and laps-led totals during his six years with Gabehart ranked second-best in both categories.<\/p>\n
In a 2024 anonymous survey The Athletic conducted with all 16 playoff drivers that season<\/a>, Gabehart received eight votes as the crew chief they would most want to have. (Cliff Daniels, Kyle Larson\u2019s crew chief, received the second-most votes with five.)<\/p>\nGibbs, a three-time Super Bowl-winning head coach, formed JGR in 1992, still owns a majority share of the company and runs it on a day-to-day basis. The organization is regarded as one of the sport\u2019s top-tier teams, a destination job for many. It has won five championships in NASCAR\u2019s premier Cup Series.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"HUNTERSVILLE, N.C. \u2014 Joe Gibbs Racing has filed a lawsuit against former competition director Chris Gabehart, alleging that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":487417,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[446],"tags":[49,48,12716,634,82],"class_list":["post-487416","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nascar","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-motorsports","tag-nascar","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/487416","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=487416"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/487416\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/487417"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=487416"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=487416"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=487416"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}