At the start of December, it was reported that Chris Gabehart had left Joe Gibbs Racing in a shocking exit. He labored at JGR for 13 years, and received 22 Cup races as a crew chief for Denny Hamlin between 2019 and 2024. Most just lately, he labored because the Director of Competitors for the elite group.
Since his departure, there was no phrase relating to why Gabehart left, or the place he would find yourself in 2026. However on Thursday, we discovered that and rather more as JGR filed a lawsuit in opposition to Gabehart, accusing him of collaborating in a “brazen scheme to steal JGR’s most delicate info and use it for the good thing about a direct competitor in NASCAR.”
That direct competitor is Spire Motorsports, a Chevrolet group aligned with Hendrick Motorsports, with three full-time chartered entries. The submitting notes that Gabehart met personally with Jeff Dickerson, the co-owner at Spire.
Carson Hocevar, No. 77 Spire Motorsports Chevrolet; Denny Hamlin, No. 11 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota; Ty Gibbs, No. 54 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota
Picture by: Malcolm Hope – Icon Sportswire through Getty Photographs
On account of what the group calls the “misappropriation of JGR’s Confidential Data and Commerce Secrets and techniques,” and studying that Gabehart was set to take the function of Chief Motorsports Officer at Spire, Gibbs opted to file the aforementioned lawsuit. In response to the submitting, JGR was conscious of the truth that he was looking for employment at Spire, however had been advised that it was a place “which he wouldn’t present Spire with providers much like the providers he supplied JGR.”
There was additionally a forensic evaluation of Gabehart’s laptop and cellphone, which JGR claims gives a timeline and execution of a plan on Gabehart’s half, involving the transferring of information, setups, and different delicate info. Amongst his actions, the group says he accessed JGR’s Confidential Data and Commerce Secrets and techniques, and proceeded to take at the least a dozen pictures to keep away from transferring recordsdata instantly in what they see as an effort to keep away from an digital paper path.
A few of these pictures options complete post-race audits and analyses of group and driver efficiency for your complete 2025 season, full group payrolls together with contract lengths, sponsor income numbers and different enterprise preparations, pit crew analytics, in-depth tire knowledge. Gabehart’s Google Drive, the place these pictures had been saved, had been then synced to the JGR laptop computer. Throughout the Google Drive, there was a file titled ‘Spire’ and ‘previous setups.’
A extra intensive evaluation of the submitting will be discovered HERE, and you’ll learn the official doc beneath:
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