In a Wednesday night legal filing, Joe Gibbs Racing says Chris Gabehart was not able to entirely comply with the expedited discovery order issued by the Western District of North Carolina due to text messages he deleted prior to the lawsuit brought against him.
Additionally, JGR believes it has been able to construct a narrative that shows its former competition director ‘immediately operationalized’ trade secrets for the use at Spire Motorsports while under a restrictive covenant.
In italics below is language taken directly from the Joe Gibbs Racing filing:
“That evidence reveals Gabehart did not merely take JGR’s trade secrets—he immediately operationalized them for Spire’s benefit, creating a detailed ‘Focus Plan’ referencing the very categories of misappropriated materials, replicating JGR’s proprietary analytics tools for Spire’s use, and apparently actively participating in Spire’s NASCAR race-day operations while still subject to his restrictive covenant.
“Equally troubling, Gabehart has now admitted the deletion of an unknown number of responsive text messages with Spire’s co-owner, Jeff Dickerson— communications deleted in the days immediately following his misappropriation—depriving JGR of critical evidence and warranting an adverse inference that the deleted messages would have further implicated both Defendants in the joint misappropriation of JGR’s trade secrets. In short, the cumulative record amply justifies broad injunctive relief—coupled with court-ordered monitoring—can protect JGR from the ‘threat’ of irreparable harm that continues to unfold.”
Specifically, Joe Gibbs Racing is asking the court to mandate that Spire and Gabehart detail exactly what he is doing in his role as Chief Motorsports Officer in order to prove that they are currently in compliance with a narrow temporary restraining order.
That TRO allows Gabehart to be employed by Spire, but not conduct any business in which there would be overlap in his previous duties as JGR competition director. Joe Gibbs Racing also continues to contend that Gabehart basically never quit in a way that would permit a one-week non-compete clause.
For his part, Gabehart says JGR was in violation of their contract together when it stopped paying him. JGR says it stopped paying him upon the conviction that Gabehart was a risk for sharing its protected trade secrets with Spire Motorsports.
Overall, and this will be debated in front of Judge Susan C. Rodriguez on Thursday, Joe Gibbs Racing is seeking over $8 million in damages from Gabehart and Spire and is also seeking a preliminary injunction order that would stop them from working together immediately.
Joe Gibbs Racing has also now formally asked the court for an expedited schedule to reach discovery and a trial sooner as to sort this out before the end of the 2026 Cup Series season.
Deleted texts
For much of this litigation process over the past month, Joe Gibbs Racing has challenged the credibility of Gabehart in terms of legal responses that proprietary data was not given to Spire as part of his hiring at Spire.
JGR says the deleted messages add to that narrative.
“In response to JGR’s expedited discovery requests, Gabehart admitted that he deleted ‘text messages with Mr. Dickerson, the Spire co-owner, prior to November 15, 2025,’ rendering them ‘not available at this time.’ The timing of this deletion is telling. Gabehart deleted these communications the week after misappropriating JGR’s trade secrets on November 7, 2025 — and he accessed his ‘Spire’ Google Drive folder on that very same day, November 15. This sequence of events — misappropriation, followed days later by manual and selective deletion of communications with the co-owner of the very company to which the stolen information would have such value— justifies JGR’s request for an injunction to protect against threatened misappropriation, a claim recognized under both federal and North Carolina trade secret law.”
According to the filing, Gabehart conceded that ‘at least one of those texts would be responsive’ to the subject matter as ordered by Judge Rodriguez last week. Gabehart said he deleted the texts ‘because there was no threat of litigation at the time.’
As part of discovery, JGR procured text messages between Gabehart and Dickerson from November 18 discussing the potential of a lawsuit. In other words, Gabehart seems to suggest a likelihood that his conduct could become a legal matter around the same time.
From the filing:
“Here, the surviving texts show that, by at least November 18, 2025—contemporaneous with the November 15 deletion—both Gabehart and Dickerson were discussing a potential lawsuit, rendering litigation reasonably foreseeable by both defendants. GABEHART00047 (mentioning “settlement talks” and a “[l]awsuit”). As such, he either anticipated his actions would eventually be discovered and deleted the messages to eliminate evidence central to the dispute—the essence of spoliation, or he believed he could avoid being caught and deleted them as part of a scheme to reduce the likelihood of exposure. In either scenario, he cannot now invoke the resulting evidentiary void as a shield.”
JGR says it received no innocent explanation from Gabehart, especially when paired with his decision on November 7 to photograph trade secrets from a JGR computer onto his personal phone.
The Gibbs team said Gabehart also had reason to believe that JGR would respond to trade theft due to a 2024 incident in which engineer Jeff Curtis was accused of taking trade secrets to Richard Childress Racing.
Those reasons, as detailed in a declaration written by JGR competition director Wally Brown, as currently redacted and sealed from public consumption.
All told, JGR says it was not able to adequately discover Gabehart to its satisfaction based on the order issued by the judge last week. It has asked Gabehart to turn over additional documents or communications, but those efforts were met with a response from their legal team that they were client-attorney privileged.
The judge also only allowed expedited discovery against Gabehart and not Spire executives like Dickerson, co-owner Dan Towriss or president Bill Anthony.
“Gabehart’s destruction of evidence has significantly impaired JGR’s ability to determine whether and the extent to which JGR’s confidential information was transmitted to Spire in advance of the hearing on JGR’s Motion for Preliminary Injunction. Because expedited discovery was limited to Gabehart alone, JGR has had no ability to obtain corresponding documents from Spire to fill the gaps that Gabehart’s spoliation has created. As JGR’s forensic examiner attested, the forensic review could not exclude the possibility that JGR information was shared through deleted text messages, web-based email portals, Google Photos, or other file-sharing platforms.”
This is part and parcel to why JGR wants an expedited path to trial so it can also reached the normal discovery process faster too and reach a resolution before the end of the season to minimize any damage potentially being done to them.
Also, JGR believes the deleted texts were deleted for a very specific legal purpose.
“Gabehart’s deliberate destruction of evidence both factually and legally warrants an adverse inference that the deleted communications were damaging to both him and Spire.”
Alleged misconduct
Joe Gibbs Racing says Gabehart began to create a strategy plan for Spire within 15 days of ceasing his duties for JGR and receiving an offer from Spire.
That focus plan, which is currently under public seal, is in a text message titled GABEHART00092.
“That document functions as a roadmap for leveraging JGR’s confidential information, expressly referencing specific categories of documents Gabehart misappropriated from JGR, including setup procedures, CC (Crew Chief) audits, driver debriefs, and performance analytics.”
In his redacted declaration, Wally Brown says that plan ‘reflects highly sensitive trade secrets’ that JGR developed over years of experience and data collection. Then, come January, JGR accuses him of implementing that trade data.
“In January 2026, Gabehart then created a Spire spreadsheet that closely replicates JGR’s proprietary race-performance analytics tool.”
JGR says that spreadsheet has Spire using JGR terminology and approaches and did so by the season opening Daytona 500.
“The resemblance is not coincidental; it reflects the direct migration of JGR’s trade-secret framework to Spire—conferring an immediate competitive advantage to Spire that is grounded in stolen information. Put simply, JGR “finds itself in the position of a coach, one of whose players has left, playbook in hand, to join the opposing team before the big game.”
The timeline was previously established but Joe Gibbs Racing again maintains, through longtime engineer and crew chief Todd Berrier, that Gabehart was communicating with Towriss as early as October.
Gabehart denies that.
Joe Gibbs Racing is now accusing Gabehart of running ‘compensation projections’ for Spire in a file called ‘My Cut’ as represented in sealed discovered text message GABEHART00029.
Spire has said that Gabehart’s official start day was February 17 but discovered emails between himself and Bill Anthony had them discussing organizational flow charts by early February 2026.
Spire has filed numerous declarations and documentation that indicates that Gabehart signed a non-disclosure form that prevents him from sharing JGR data with Spire. Dickerson has said he doesn’t need nor want JGR data because they have an alliance with Hendrick Motorsports.
JGR accused Spire on Wednesday of putting on a show for the public.
“On February 11, 2026, as JGR prepared to seek emergency relief, but before this action was filed on February 19, 2026, the expedited discovery shows Gabehart and Spire’s co-owner exchanged text messages strategizing over the potential lawsuit. In those messages, Dickerson explicitly described the request for emergency relief as signaling that ‘it’s on,’ and Gabehart later remarked that the only remaining issue with the employment agreement was how to frame language referencing JGR ‘given all of this.’ This admission suggests that the February 16, 2026, Confidentiality and Non-Disclosure Agreement was not a bona fide safeguard, but a reactive document hastily assembled once litigation became inevitable and designed to manufacture the appearance of compliance rather than protect JGR’s interests.”
On indemnity
Earlier on Thursday, Spire president Bill Anthony posted a declaration that claimed his team is now paying for Gabehart’s legal fees and that doing so was never part of their agreement.
On February 22, Dickerson texted Gabehart that ‘everyone (was) excited to see (Gabehart’s response) to the lawsuit and also stated that Spire was ‘in the boat.’ Gabehart responded that the support meant ‘the world’ to him.
Again, the context is hard to fully ascertain because the full conversation is redacted and under seal.
Joe Gibbs Racing has previously painted Gabehart as being under the financial legal aid of Spire due to his google searches of ‘indemnity’ in November.
Keeping close tabs
Chris Gabehart was at Darlington Raceway all weekend in both the Spire Motorsports Truck Series and Cup Series garage areas on Friday and Sunday.
Motorsport.com took notice of that as well.
The presence of Gabehart sitting in the stands before the race drew the suspicion of Joe Gibbs Racing Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer Eric Schaffer as well. From his declaration:
“Mr. Gabehart is wearing a customized two-way radio which is the device teams use to communicate among crew chiefs, spotters, drivers, and possibly race engineers during races, including private channels that cannot be picked up by race fans or other teams. This is a different device from a typical public ‘scanner’ radio where race fans can listen in on some spotters and crew chiefs talk with each other and with the drivers.
“In addition to receiving this photograph the day after the Goodyear 400, I have fielded numerous reports from individuals that were in the garage area at Darlington that Mr. Gabehart was in garage area at the conclusion of the race speaking with Spire Motorsports employees about the race behind their race haulers.”
What is the point? From the JGR filing:
“Gabehart’s choice to watch the race from the grandstands, rather than from the team suite or alongside Spire personnel—as would be expected given his role—further supports the inference that he was attempting to avoid notice. His repeated attendance at and participation in race-day activities for Spire, including in areas and communication means that would allow him to discuss race strategy in real time, underscores the imminent threat of misappropriation of JGR’s trade secrets given race day is exactly the context in which JGR’s competition strategies may be employed.
Further, Gabehart has the ability to convey this information in a way verbally by radio or in person, in ways that are virtually unrecordable and undetectable. These circumstances, combined with Gabehart’s demonstrated credibility issues and previous efforts to use JGR information for Spire’s benefit, necessitate a reporting requirement to mitigate the threat of misappropriation of JGR’s trade secrets—Gabehart cannot be simply trusted to comply.”
However, to be fair to the facts, Gabehart was not hiding behind the haulers on Friday or Sunday after those races and was instead having very public conversations in the middle of the garage for the world to see, saying ‘hello’ to anyone that said hello to him.
What next?
The two sides will meet in court on Thursday morning to argue over the preliminary injunction motion in which Joe Gibbs Racing seeks to have Gabehart cease working for Spire, or for a minimum, report his every duty to the court as to ensure there is no overlap of duties in question.
JGR now wants the court to expedite the trial process.
It wants ordinary Rule 26 discovery conferences and disclosures by April 2 and a trial as soon as possible. Why?
“An expedited trial date will eliminate unnecessary delays in discovery and promote an efficient resolution of the instant dispute.”
The relevant filings
Joe Gibbs Racing’s complete Thursday filing
Eric Schaffer’s declaration
Declaration about Gabehart’s deleted texts
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