Joe Gibbs Racing has amended its lawsuit against Chris Gabehart and has now extended those claims against Spire Motorsports while also asking the Western District of North Carolina to enforce a restraining order to prevent the pairing from continue working together.
Spire Motorsports confirmed over the weekend at Atlanta Motor Speedway that it has hired Gabehart, a longtime engineer turned crew chief and one year competition director at Joe Gibbs Racing, to serve as Chief Motorsports Officer.
JGR sued Gabehart last week — alleging a violation of non-compete agreements and a ‘brazen scheme’ to steal proprietary competition trade secrets and take it with him to Spire when overtures for a de facto promotion were declined by team owner Joe Gibbs.
Joe Gibbs Racing claim that Gabehart created a folder titled ‘Spire’ from his work computer and synced the information within the team’s database to his personal Google Drive. The team claims Gabehart took photos of set-up information on his personal phone for the purpose of taking it with him to Spire.
It accused Gabehart of accessing JGR’s database even on a day in which he met with Spire Motorsports team co-owner Jeff Dickerson. Through the first week of the litigation, JGR had not named Spire as a defendant but did so on Tuesday night with the amended filing.
The new claims against Spire are detailed below, exact quotes from the filing, italicized for clarity:
“Spire knowingly, intentionally, unjustifiably, and in bad faith induced Gabehart to breach his contract with JGR by (1) soliciting and hiring him to work for Spire, and/or (2) requesting, encouraging, or otherwise inducing him to disclose or use Plaintiff’s trade secrets or confidential information.
“As a direct and proximate result of Spire’s misconduct, Plaintiff has suffered and continues to suffer damages in an amount to be proven at trial, and irreparable harm by way of, among other things, loss of competitive advantage, and loss of confidential information.”
As part of the expanded lawsuit, Joe Gibbs Racing is asking the court for a restraining order that prevents Gabehart from working at Spire Motorsports if in any capacity similar to that of his role as competition director last year but also deploying any ‘trade secrets’ acquired during his time with his previous employer. JGR is asking the court to force Gabehart to return any proprietary material he may have in his possession.
Joe Gibbs Racing states in the filings that it will suffer irreparable harm due to Gabehart and the alleged data he took with him to Spire being used to replicate their set-ups due to how competitively similar everyone’s NextGen cars are.
“Because all teams now race the same car and obtain car components from the same suppliers, understanding only a small portion of the details of how a competitor sets up its cars would allow other teams to extrapolate on that information and recreate a successful car setup.
“As a result, car setup, analytics, and race strategy have become increasingly important as competitive differentiators in NASCAR since the introduction of the NextGen car in 2022. This information is highly guarded.
“Consequently, such misuse, disclosure, or dissemination of JGR’s Confidential Information and Trade Secrets would result in impaired ability to compete, lost profits and business opportunities, and reputational harm, among other injuries.”
The complete amended filing can be found below with additional details below that.
In filing the motion for injunctive relief and a restraining order, Joe Gibbs Racing also stated that neither Spire nor Gabehart are voluntarily consenting, and thus both will have to be issued by Judge Matthew Orso.
“Counsel for JGR has conferred with counsel for Gabehart concerning the relief requested in the Motion, and counsel for Gabehart has indicated Gabehart does not consent to the relief requested in the Motion. Similarly, JGR has conferred with Spire concerning the relief requested in the Motion, and Spire does not consent to the relief requested in the Motion.”
The restraining order and injunctive relief motion can be found below, with additional information below that.
The amended complaint and restraining order motion also included written declarations from JGR competition director Wally Brown, who resumed the role he held before briefly turning it over to Gabehart last year but also chief financial officer Tim Carmichael.
The third declaration is from Clark C. Walton, a ‘forensics expert for Reliance Forensics, and a licensed attorney who was retained by JGR for the Gabehart case and oversaw the analysis of the files that led to this lawsuit.
Walton said his firm observed the following Google search history
Additionally, Walton cited the following discoveries:
“Reliance also observed synced activity on the JGR Computer related to a Google Drive account associated with Gabehart’s personal Gmail address. The Known Synced Google Drive appears to have been synced with the JGR Computer. The Known Synced Google Drive account contained a folder named ‘Spire’ which contained a subfolder named ‘Past Setups.’ Reliance did not access the contents of The Known Synced Google Drive account itself as part of its initial review of the JGR Computer. Reliance observed interactions with the Spire Folder on November 12, 13, 15, 23, 25, 26, 27 and December 2, 2025 as stated below. The Last Viewed Time shown on this report generally indicates that time that a folder on file was last opened.”
Walton detailed alleged access of ‘https://apps.jgrcloud.com/,’ ‘https://analytics.joegibbsracing.com,’ ‘https://joegibbsracing-my.sharepoint.com,’ and ‘https://trdhydra.toyota.com/,’ in mid to late November.
The report details times that an unknown account and one account associated with what appears to be Gabehart’s personal email address accessing JGR’s database.
The full Walton declaration can be found below.
Joe Gibbs Racing also responded to Gabehart’s statement that ’emphatically denied’ the allegations.
“The statement was materially false and misleading. First, the forensic expert engaged by JGR confirmed that Defendant had taken JGR’s Confidential Information and Trade Secrets, including financial information Gabehart expressly denied taking on December 17, 2025.
“Second, the forensic expert informed Gabehart through his counsel that the review did not demonstrate Gabehart had not shared JGR’s Confidential Information and Trade Secrets with third parties or saved the materials Gabehart did take in different locations. Indeed the forensic review team noted that the review ‘did not exclude the possibility of [JGR] files being sent via email from a web portal, being sent via text message then deleted the message, shared directly via Google Photos or any other fileshare site.”
Gabehart has said he will file a response in the coming days.
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