CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) — Joe Gibbs Racing’s former race director claimed Wednesday that the Pro Football Hall of Fame coach is suing him for “daring to leave” the NASCAR team when Gibbs’ grandson’s situation became untenable at the organization.
Chris Gabehart admitted in a statement filed in the Western District of North Carolina that he did use his cellphone to take photos of JGR Excel files and other projects he helped develop. But Gabhart insists his own forensic audit proves the information was never shared with any other organization.
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JGR is suing Gabehart for allegedly carrying out a “shameless scheme to steal JGR’s most sensitive information,” adding Spire Motorsports to the suit Tuesday night. JGR also requested a restraining order barring Gabehart from working for a rival team.
JGR alleges that Gabehart obtained proprietary information from the team and brought it to Spire’s new position.
Gabehart has disputed that assertion and claims his 13-year tenure at JGR began to unravel last season when he put pressure on team principal Ty Gibbs – the grandson of the team owner – despite being promoted to competition director at the end of 2024.
“I informed JGR that the job was nothing like what was advertised. I was promised a chief operating officer (COO) type role with oversight of all competitive operations and leadership autonomy,” Gabhardt wrote in the statement. “Instead, I found myself constantly entangled with Coach Gibbs, senior JGR executives and family members when making day-to-day game decisions – a dysfunctional organizational structure that I could not continue.”
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Gabehart claimed he had “serious concerns” about the way Ty Gibbs’ No. 54 team was managed, specifically that the team was not held to the same standards as the Christopher Bell, Chase Briscoe and Denny Hamlin teams and that the car was “directly managed by Coach Gibbs and everyone in the organization knows that.”
Gabehart said he put pressure on team principal Ty Gibbs behind the scenes, and then in late June he scheduled the pit stop for the young driver for nine consecutive races. He maintained that he provided specific examples of disparate treatment by No. 54 that undermined his position as competition director, specifically that Ty Gibbs “was not held to the same meeting attendance standards as everyone else on the team.”
When things came to a head late last season, Gabehart claims he began signing a separation agreement with JGR and was told to say he was “on vacation” if anyone asked him why he wasn’t working. He maintains that JGR stopped paying him his salary in November as talks over his departure became contentious and eventually stalled.
JGR has since filed a lawsuit claiming Gabehart breached his contract and stole confidential team trade secrets, and that “his requests for additional authorization were denied by JGR’s owners.” JGR claims Gabehart caused more than $8 million in losses to the organization.
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Gabehart maintains that he paid for his own forensic audit, which found “no evidence that I transmitted, distributed, used or otherwise shared any JGR confidential information. No text messages. No email attachments. No dissemination.”
“This lawsuit is not about protecting trade secrets, but about punishing former employees who dared to leave,” Gabehart claimed.
JGR was founded in 1992 by Joe Gibbs, who won three Super Bowl championships as coach of the Washington Football Team. Gibbs is a member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame and the NASCAR Hall of Fame and now co-owns JGR with his daughter-in-law Heather.
Heather Gibbs is the mother of Ty Gibbs, who is in his fourth full Cup Series season driving for his grandfather. Ty Gibbs has had success in NASCAR’s secondary series, winning 12 races and the 2022 championship. The morning after Ty won the title, his father Coy was found dead in his hotel room.
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Ty Gibbs moved to the Cup Series in 2023 and was winless in 125 games. The 23-year-old finished a career-best 15th in the 2024 Cup standings.
Gabehart joined JGR in 2012 as an engineer and later became Hamlin’s crew chief and race director ahead of the 2025 season. Gabehart was Hamlin’s crew chief for six seasons, and the pair won 22 Cup races, including two at the Daytona 500, and qualified for the championship finals three times.
Hamlin finished fifth or better in six seasons under Gabehart, and Hamlin ranked second in both wins and laps led in the Cup Series during that span.
The lawsuit filed by JGR after Gabehart said he no longer wanted to work for the organization said its own forensic audit uncovered Google searches for Spire Motorsports, folders titled “Spire” and “Past Settings” and more than a dozen images of JGR files containing confidential information and trade secrets.
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Gabehart admitted taking the photos and creating the “Spire” folder, but said the folder was for his own evaluation of whether to join a rival team.
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