Joe Gibbs Racing is asking the Western District of North Carolina to hold Chris Gabehart and Spire Motorsports in civil contempt because it claims both defendants have violated the temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction placed against them in March.
Specifically, JGR is asking that the defendants appear in court to explain why they should not be held in contempt. This is all part of the ongoing lawsuit and countersuit between the three parties that stemmed from Gabehart leaving JGR at the end of last season, where he was accused of breaching contract and also taking proprietary information with him to benefit Spire.
Since the litigation began, the court has issued an order that Gabehart cannot offer services to Spire similar to the competition director duties he performed at Gibbs during the 2025 season.
This includes preparing/executing car and race strategies, overseeing analytics and processes to improve performance, attending weekly competition and post-race meetings, giving input on setups, aerodynamics, and operations.
Gibbs is arguing to the court that Gabehart has done exactly that on numerous occasions this season and that Spire has enabled this workaround by giving him the ‘Chief Motorsports Officer; title and a ‘all things racing’ role that JGR is arguing is deceptive in nature.
In the motion, JGR says Spire failed to impose meaningful restrictions on Gabehart within the company until months after litigation commenced.
“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.”
To make this point, JGR has filed dozens of documents containing email records, depositions and text messages that contained instances where Gabehart was acting in a role similar to a competition director after the court issued an order.
Examples provided
"On March 21, 2026, while the TRO was effective, Gabehart discussed technical details and issues regarding Spire’s No. 77 and No. 71 cars with Matt McCall, Spire’s Cup Series competition director."
"A week later, on March 28, 2026, Spire’s top Cup Series driver Carson
Hocevar relayed specific technical difficulties with his car to Gabehart by text message, and Gabehart responded: 'stop.'
That text exchange can be read below.
In other words, Gabehart recognized that Hocevar was engaging in a conversation that would be a blatant violation of the court order.
Spire technical director Dax Gerringer said in a deposition that Gabehart has attended several competition meetings since the order and provided technical assistance. The deposition was filed under seal but the motion detailed some of what JGR has taken exception to.
“One meeting bears particular emphasis. Gerringer confirmed that Gabehart attended Spire’s competition meeting on April 20, 2026 after the Cup Series race in Kansas. Gerringer’s contemporaneous notes recorded Gabehart making two specific technical recommendations: to
Similarly under redaction, Spire shop foreman Doug Powers said in a deposition that Spire had never
Dickerson's abridged deposition can be read below.
In his own deposition, Spire co-owner Jeff Dickerson said that Gabehart has been hired, in part, to assess 'where are we weak as far as equipment that we need to get into our shop.' In a declaration, former and current once again Joe Gibbs Racing competition director Wally Brown said these are the same tasks he has in his job and the one Gabehart held last season – ‘addressing longer-term competitive planning, capital investments, resource allocation, and organizational strategy.’
Brown's declaration can be read below.
Joe Gibbs Racing says it has testimony that ‘Gabehart attended at least five—and possibly as many as twelve—competition meetings,’ and that Spire has produced only one competition meeting video recording and three pages of notes. It’s asking the court to force Spire to produce more.
About the deleted texts
On November 15, Gabehart deleted the entire text message history he had with Dickerson, just two days after being provided with a job offer to work at Spire Motorsports.
Part of the discovery process of this lawsuit is Gibbs attempting to recover those messages to determine if the defendants had discussed the proprietary information that the court has since confirmed was 'misappropriated' by Gabehart. JRG believes that information is being used by Gabehart at Spire this season but has yet to produce to the court any such evidence.
Since then, texts have not been recovered and appear lost to time. The below passage is from JGR’s motion to sanction Gabehart for deleting the text messages.
“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.”
Why, in his deposition, did Gabehart deleted the texts?
"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."
Gabehart said it was wrong to entertain an offer when he had not separated from JGR.
“I wasn't done separating with Joe Gibbs Racing and that was my focus. That's how I felt on the matter.”
He also called it an ‘unsolicited’ offer and one that he took offense at receiving, but JGR takes exception to that too.
“This testimony is damaging for Gabehart in two respects. First, the ‘unsolicited’ characterization of the offer is contradicted by the ‘Spire’ and ‘Spire offer’ notes created before the November 13 text offer from Dickerson, as well as his communications with Dickerson before and after the November 15 deletion. Indeed, on November 18 Dickerson and Gabehart text about ‘rumors’ at JGR that Gabehart was joining Spire, which shows he was, at minimum, under suspicion of joining Spire in violation of his JGR non-compete. Second, Gabehart has admitted that he was thinking about his incomplete separation from JGR when he deleted the text messages.”
JGR says Gabehart also deleted 'an entire phone's worth of notes' on December 16 and 17 and deleted another one about a meeting with Spire on November 20. JGR is asking the court to infer that he did so for nefarious purposes.
“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.”
So what does JGR want from the court?
“JGR requests the Court: (1) find that Gabehart acted with the intent to deprive JGR of the deleted Dickerson text messages in this litigation, by clear and convincing evidence, and hold that JGR is entitled to an adverse-inference instruction—that the jury may infer that the deleted communications contained information damaging to Gabehart, including that his discussions with Dickerson about employment with Spire began before November 13, 2025, that Gabehart actively solicited an employment offer from Spire, and that Gabehart shared and discussed JGR confidential information and trade secrets with Dickerson—with the precise wording reserved to the Court at trial.”
