Joe Gibbs Racing Seeks Sanctions Against Spire Motorsports and Chris Gabehart for Alleged Contempt of Court

Joe Gibbs Racing (JGR) has formally petitioned the U.S. District Court for the Western District of North Carolina to hold Spire Motorsports and its Chief Motorsports Officer, Chris Gabehart, in civil contempt. The racing powerhouse alleges that both entities have flagrantly violated a temporary restraining order (TRO) and a preliminary injunction previously issued by the court in March. This legal maneuver escalates the ongoing dispute that originated from Gabehart’s departure from JGR at the conclusion of the previous racing season, amidst accusations of contract breach and the misappropriation of proprietary information intended to benefit Spire.

The core of JGR’s motion lies in its contention that Gabehart, despite court-ordered restrictions, has continued to perform duties analogous to his former role as competition director at Joe Gibbs Racing. The March injunction specifically prohibited Gabehart from offering services to Spire that mirrored his responsibilities at JGR, including but not limited to: the preparation and execution of car and race strategies, oversight of analytics and performance improvement processes, participation in weekly competition and post-race meetings, and providing input on vehicle setups, aerodynamics, and overall operations.

JGR asserts that Gabehart has demonstrably contravened these directives on multiple occasions throughout the current season. The legal filing claims that Spire has facilitated these alleged violations by bestowing upon Gabehart the title of "Chief Motorsports Officer" and assigning him a broad "all things racing" portfolio, which JGR characterizes as a deliberate circumvention of the court’s order. The motion further contends that Spire failed to implement any meaningful internal restrictions on Gabehart’s activities until several months after the litigation commenced, thereby enabling the alleged breaches.

In its formal request to the court, JGR stated, "JGR respectfully requests that the Court order Gabehart and Spire to appear and show cause why they should not be held in contempt for failure to comply with this Court’s TRO and PI, find that their conduct is contemptuous, award JGR its costs and fees in bringing this Motion, and grant any other relief to which JGR is justly entitled."

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To substantiate its claims, JGR has submitted a substantial body of evidence, including dozens of documents comprising email records, deposition transcripts, and text messages. These materials reportedly detail instances where Gabehart allegedly assumed a role directly conflicting with the court’s injunction.

Among the specific examples cited by JGR is an alleged interaction on March 21, 2026, while the TRO was still in effect. According to the motion, Gabehart engaged in discussions concerning technical details and issues related to Spire’s No. 77 and No. 71 race cars with Matt McCall, Spire’s Cup Series competition director.

Further evidence presented involves a text message exchange from March 28, 2026. Carson Hocevar, a prominent driver for Spire, allegedly relayed specific technical difficulties with his car to Gabehart via text. Gabehart’s terse reply, "stop," is interpreted by JGR as an acknowledgment that the conversation was veering into territory that would constitute a direct violation of the court order.

In a deposition, Spire’s technical director, Dax Gerringer, reportedly confirmed that Gabehart has attended several competition meetings since the injunction was issued and provided technical assistance. While Gerringer’s full deposition remains under seal, JGR’s motion highlights specific points of contention. Gerringer’s contemporaneous notes from a competition meeting on April 20, 2026, following the Cup Series race in Kansas, allegedly record Gabehart making two specific technical recommendations. The nature of these recommendations has been redacted in the publicly available filing.

Similarly, Spire shop foreman Doug Powers, in his deposition, reportedly stated that Spire had not utilized a particular technical process until "midsummer" of 2026, after Gabehart’s arrival, and had not employed another specific technique until the week of the Coca-Cola 600 in May. This timeline is significant as it places the adoption of these practices weeks after Gabehart allegedly made a recommendation for them in an April competition meeting.

In his own deposition, Spire co-owner Jeff Dickerson indicated that Gabehart was hired, in part, to assess "where are we weak as far as equipment that we need to get into our shop." This description of Gabehart’s role has been directly contrasted with the responsibilities of a competition director by Wally Brown, a former and current competition director at Joe Gibbs Racing. In a declaration, Brown stated that these are precisely the types of tasks he undertakes in his role and that Gabehart previously performed, encompassing "addressing longer-term competitive planning, capital investments, resource allocation, and organizational strategy."

Joe Gibbs Racing further claims to possess testimony suggesting Gabehart attended at least five, and potentially as many as twelve, competition meetings. Despite this, Spire has reportedly produced only one video recording of a competition meeting and three pages of notes. JGR is now seeking a court order compelling Spire to produce additional documentation related to these meetings.

The legal battle has also encompassed the contentious issue of deleted text messages. On November 15, 2025, mere days after reportedly receiving a job offer from Spire Motorsports, Gabehart deleted his entire text message history with Jeff Dickerson. A crucial aspect of the ongoing lawsuit involves JGR’s efforts to recover these messages, which they believe could confirm discussions pertaining to proprietary information that the court has previously acknowledged was "misappropriated" by Gabehart. JGR posits that this information is being actively utilized by Gabehart at Spire this season, though direct evidence to this effect has yet to be presented to the court.

Efforts to recover the deleted messages have thus far proven unsuccessful. A passage from JGR’s motion to sanction Gabehart for this deletion states: "Sanctions are appropriate because the Dickerson text messages that Gabehart destroyed cannot be retrieved from other sources. JGR’s forensic examiner imaged Gabehart’s devices, extracted every available cloud and carrier backup, and submitted a content request to Verizon. None of those efforts recovered a single deleted Dickerson text message. The examiner attributes that to the manner of deletion: Gabehart deleted the thread locally and in its entirety, so no backup preserved the content. The carrier does not retain message content and could provide only metadata. Gabehart cannot supply the missing substance—he claims not to remember the messages or notes, yet asserts that ‘[t]o the best of [his] recollection,’ they were irrelevant to this lawsuit. The text thread cannot be collected from Dickerson, who did not preserve the messages either."

When questioned about the deletion during his deposition, Gabehart attributed his actions to panic in a high-pressure situation, stating, "That’s a great question, and it’s one that’s easy to scrutinize in a room full of people who pretend to have done no wrong in moments like this. But the truth of the matter is, I was an individual in a high-pressure situation and I panicked and I deleted the text." He acknowledged that it was an error to entertain an offer while still in the process of separating from JGR, describing it as a matter of focus. Gabehart also characterized the offer as "unsolicited" and one that he found offensive to receive.

However, JGR disputes this characterization. The racing organization argues that Gabehart’s testimony is contradictory, pointing to notes created before the November 13 text offer from Dickerson, as well as communications between them before and after the November 15 deletion, that mention "Spire" and "Spire offer." Furthermore, JGR notes that on November 18, Dickerson and Gabehart texted about "rumors" at JGR that Gabehart was joining Spire, suggesting Gabehart was aware of suspicions regarding his potential violation of his non-compete agreement. JGR also highlights that Gabehart admitted to considering his incomplete separation from JGR when he deleted the text messages.

In addition to the deleted text messages with Dickerson, JGR alleges that Gabehart also purged an "entire phone’s worth of notes" on December 16 and 17, 2025, and another note related to a meeting with Spire on November 20. JGR is requesting the court to infer that these deletions were made with the intent to obstruct the litigation. The motion states, "Every deletion follows an identifiable litigation-related trigger. The entire Dickerson thread disappeared two days after Spire purportedly conveyed its offer to Gabehart (November 15). The three phone notes—two with Spire included in the name—disappeared the day after JGR’s C&D and Preservation Letter (December 16). And he deleted the ‘Matt’ note after the initial forensic process, knowing additional discovery could follow. Finally, he deleted the post-race audit document from his Spire computer after this lawsuit was filed."

Consequently, Joe Gibbs Racing is seeking specific remedies from the court. JGR requests that the court find, by clear and convincing evidence, that Gabehart acted with the intent to deprive JGR of the deleted text messages. This would allow JGR to seek an adverse inference instruction, enabling the jury to presume that the deleted communications contained information detrimental to Gabehart. Such an inference could suggest that his discussions with Dickerson about employment with Spire began prior to November 13, 2025, that Gabehart actively sought an offer from Spire, and that he shared and discussed JGR’s confidential information and trade secrets with Dickerson. The precise wording of any such instruction would be determined by the court at trial.

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