Joe Gibbs Racing is pointing to Spire Motorsports placing Chris Gabehart on administrative leave over the past month as yet another reason the team should be placed in contempt for violating a restraining order and preliminary injunction.
This is all part of the ongoing lawsuit and countersuit between the three parties that stemmed from Gabehart leaving JGR at the end of 2025, where he was accused of breaching contract and also taking proprietary information with him to benefit Spire.
Specifically, Gibbs claims that Gabehart has breached since March, numerous times, a court order that prevents its longtime employee from providing services similar to his previous competition director role.
The order also prevents him from keeping, accessing, or using proprietary information or trade secrets misappropriated, while returning any data in his possession.
Since Joe Gibbs Racing filed the motion that seeks a contempt order from the court, Spire has placed Gabehart on ‘administrative leave,’ which the plaintiffs have immediately seized upon as proof of previous wrongdoing.
Italicized below is from a Wednesday response filing from Joe Gibbs Racing:
“Defendants’ claims of good faith compliance with the Court’s Orders also fall short. Contrary to Defendants’ assertion, Spire’s repeated decisions to curtail Gabehart’s access to its systems and his involvement in the Cup Series were not the result of proactive compliance, they were damage control. Spire confiscated Gabehart’s laptop only after it became a named defendant; it cut off his company email only after he continued to be included on Cup Series competitive communications; it pulled him from Cup meetings only after he had repeatedly attended and offered commentary; and it placed him on administrative leave only after JGR filed this Motion.
Spire’s hollow claim that it acted because of JGR’s ‘litigious nature’ only confirms that Spire recognized that Gabehart’s behavior could be seen as a violation of the Court’s Orders. … Spire stripped Gabehart of his company email, his laptop, and his access to its systems because it evidently could not trust him with them, yet it kept paying its highest paid ‘executive’ millions of dollars.”
Basically, Gabehart is now on vacation, even though he has spent most of this summer attending Truck Series, IndyCar, Sprint Car and Super Late Model races. With Gabehart not allowed to do Cup Series competition director adjacent activities, Spire had placed him within other sectors of its business.
In open court on October 1, Joe Gibbs Racing claimed new information that had not been filed yet, in which it stated that it had evidence that Gabehart continued to have access to trade secrets from his previous employer in an account that had not been disclosed until September 4.
“The point is not that the protocol eventually required JGR to identify files for deletion; the point is that Gabehart retained undisclosed JGR materials through June 2026 and beyond while working for a direct competitor and only disclosed that circumstance after discovery closed. JGR could not demand remediation of an account it had never been told existed.
“Even after Spire took Gabehart’s Spire-issued laptop in February 2026, his counsel permitted him to retain access to the personal OneDrive account — the same account that had been synced to the Spire laptop—until late June 2026. Gabehart thus maintained access to JGR trade secret files for months after the TRO, through an account he had withheld from the January 2026 forensic process and that his counsel did not disclose to JGR until September 4.
“Contempt is necessary because the protocol cannot undo the harm. Deletion today would not erase the months during which Gabehart had access to JGR materials while employed by Spire, nor would it compensate JGR for the expense of uncovering the noncompliance. Civil contempt also serves a forward-looking role—to coerce compliance going forward.”
The other reasons for JGR to pursue contempt charges were previously documented – Carson Hocecar texted Gabehart seeking car handling feedback on March 28, and deposition statements taken from other Spire competition leaders that Gabehart had answered air pressure questions or other redacted setup matters.
Also, Spire had Gabehart in attendance for five to twelve Cup Series competition meetings and did not remove him until late May or early June, something Spire maintain it wasn’t required to do but opted for in the name of an overabundance of compliance.
Spire has yet to address the administrative leave or the allegation of a device that still had access to Joe Gibbs Racing trade secrets. However, Spire has maintained that Gabehart discussing matters like air pressures are not examples of trade secrets and that his attendance in the Cup garage or meetings is no different than the behavior of other high level executives like Jeff Gordon and Dave Alpern.
Gibbs rejects that premise.
“Defendants’ primary strategy is to minimize and recharacterize Gabehart’s Cup Series competition services. But recharacterizing undisputed conduct as ‘chatter’ or ‘executive observation’ is irrelevant under the Orders. JGR is not required to prove that Gabehart’s comments were brilliant, novel, or outcome-determinative. Instead, JGR must only show that Gabehart provided prohibited services. A single violation is enough, and the record contains many.
“Even Gabehart’s compensation undercuts Defendants’ position that his contributions to the Cup Series have been meaningless. He is the highest paid Spire employee—by millions. He was hired to oversee all NASCAR Cup Series “competitive operations,” and Dickerson has described Gabehart as being in charge of ‘all things racing.’”
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