Spire Owner Jeff Dickerson Tells Joe Gibbs Racing: 'Where Is the Proof?'

Update, October 8: A federal judge has now ordered Joe Gibbs Racing to do what Dickerson demanded on the podcast: name, finally and specifically, the trade secrets it says were taken. The ruling is covered in the new section below.

Seven months into the most expensive personnel dispute in the NASCAR garage, Spire Motorsports co-owner Jeff Dickerson has taken his defence to a podcast. Asked about Joe Gibbs Racing’s lawsuit on Dirty Mo Media’s Door, Bumper, Clear on Monday, Dickerson said it “would just be nice to see some evidence,” and that after six or seven months “there really isn’t anything,” Motorsport.com reports. Joe Gibbs Racing sued Spire and its former competition director Chris Gabehart in February, seeking $8 million. Spire’s autumn has been combative on the track as well, with Brad Keselowski accusing Spire driver Carson Hocevar of intentional accidents as their Chase feud runs on.

What is the lawsuit actually about?

A job change. Gabehart spent years at Joe Gibbs Racing, first as an engineer, then as Denny Hamlin’s crew chief, then as competition director. When he left to become Spire’s chief motorsports officer in February, his old team sued, alleging intellectual property theft and breach of a restrictive covenant, and claiming he had taken the organisation’s most sensitive information with him, Motorsport.com reports.

The court let Gabehart work at Spire but restricted him from the technical role he held at his old team. Since then the case has run through discovery, depositions and duelling motions, including Joe Gibbs Racing asking the court to hold Gabehart and Spire in contempt of those restrictions. Personnel moves are supposed to be the sport’s soap opera, as this site’s story of the points leader leaving Haas for Sam Hunt mid-title-race showed last week. This one is being fought with filing deadlines instead of press releases.

What did Dickerson say on the podcast?

That the burden has never been met. “I just don’t know how we’re supposed to prove negatives and I don’t know how we’re supposed to just sit here and take it also,” Dickerson said, Motorsport.com reports. “It’s tough to sit in court and you hear that you’re all these things.”

He also explained why, in his telling, Spire would not want the information. Spire pays Hendrick Motorsports for setup assistance through its technical alliance, he said, and using a rival’s material would insult that alliance and the friendship between Joe Gibbs and Rick Hendrick. Hendrick, whose organisation holds the Cup Series record for wins, has separately intervened in the case over fears that discovery could expose its own proprietary information, EssentiallySports reports.

What has Joe Gibbs Racing actually shown so far?

Less than its opening claims, on the public record. In July, the team withdrew one allegation, stating that it did not possess nonprivileged information sufficient to support it, On3 reports. Spire’s public statements note that the court has twice rejected injunction motions similar to the current one.

Joe Gibbs Racing’s side of the ledger is not empty: in its contempt filing it says discovery produced an extensive record, including competition meetings where Gabehart made technical recommendations, and testimony in which his role sounds unchanged, On3 reports. That filing is the team’s strongest public card, and the judge, not the podcast, will weigh it. What Joe Gibbs Racing has not yet done publicly is produce the smoking-gun document the original lawsuit implied.

Why is the trade-secret line so hard to draw in a garage?

Because a race team runs on two kinds of knowledge that look identical from outside. One kind is genuinely proprietary: a specific process a team developed and guards. The other is the craft every senior engineer carries between jobs, the accumulated sense of how a Cup Series car differs from the ones below it and how to make it faster.

Dickerson’s shorthand for the second kind, in the podcast coverage, is airboxes: sealing one is basic knowledge, not a secret. Joe Gibbs Racing’s case depends on persuading a court that what Gabehart carried was the first kind. With the NASCAR playoffs currently running, both teams are trying to win races while their lawyers argue about who owns what their employees know.

What did the judge order Joe Gibbs Racing to do on October 7?

To stop expanding the list. U.S. Magistrate Judge David Keesler ruled on Wednesday that Joe Gibbs Racing must submit a final statement by the end of next week identifying the trade secrets at issue in the litigation, RACER reports. Spire had told the October 1 hearing that Gibbs kept adding to the list of alleged secrets, and Keesler told the team the same thing at the hearing: at this stage, the lawsuit should be clear.

The production orders cut both ways. Both teams must hand over their final, as-raced setup sheets for the 2025 and 2026 Cup Series seasons by October 13, the very documents Gibbs wants compared for copying, RACER reports. Spire, meanwhile, won the full Joe Gibbs Racing agreement with Toyota Racing Development, a month of Gabehart’s emails from each of his two Gibbs roles, and internal TRD communications about his departure. The court denied 20 further categories Gibbs requested, calling the broader ask somewhat burdensome. Keesler also noted, in RACER’s account, that the parties litigate like they race, all out to win, and wished they would settle more of these disputes themselves.

What happens next in the case?

The October 13 setup-sheet exchange and the final trade-secret statement come first, and both bear directly on Dickerson’s challenge: once Gibbs files its definitive list, the “where is the proof?” argument gets tested against a fixed target instead of a moving one. The contempt fight continues alongside: Joe Gibbs Racing wants the court to find that Gabehart’s work at Spire breached the existing orders, while Spire’s position, stated by Dickerson last month, is blunt: “Spire will not be bullied by Joe Gibbs Racing,” On3 reports.

Beyond that sits a jury trial scheduled for February 1, 2027. Dickerson says he is keeping receipts for it. “I want everybody to remember every allegation,” he said on the podcast, looking ahead to the courthouse steps. Between now and then, every filing either team makes is part of the same argument he made on Monday: one side must eventually show the garage the proof.