Spire Motorsports co-owner Jeff Dickerson has filed a 22-page declaration in which he calls Joe Gibbs Racing's lawsuit an attack on his team's integrity.
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Dickerson, whose team joined Chris Gabehart as co-defendants in a lawsuit filed by Joe Gibbs Racing, addressed several parts of this legal battle that has grown more heated with time. This includes the circumstances that led to Spire Motorsports hiring Gabehart, the former JGR competition director, and whether his team had tried to obtain any confidential data from JGR.
Specifically, Dickerson alleged that the Cup Series team had "intentionally staged this litigation to interfere with Spire's legitimate business operations" and to disrupt Spire Motorsports' racing operations instead of competing on the track.
MORE: Full Dickerson Declaration
"Rather than taking the opportunity that Spire offered to allow for a forensic inspection of Spire's systems, JGR chose to run to court, long after it knew what Mr. Gabehart had done, long after a digital forensics examiner found no hint of Mr. Gabehart sharing or distributing any trade secrets to Spire, and long after it knew Mr. Gabehart was pursuing employment with Spire," Dickerson wrote.
The Spire co-owner added that he believed JGR had lost a star employee (Gabehart) because the team could not deliver the workplace role and experience that Gabehart sought.
The Private Investigator
A previous filing from Joe Gibbs Racing revealed that the team had hired a private investigator to follow Gabehart around. An exhibit showed that this PI had followed Gabehart and Dickerson to a popular Mooresville restaurant, Barcelona Burger and Beer Garden, on Dec. 2, 2025.
It was at this restaurant that the now-former JGR competition director and the Spire Motorsports co-owner shared a meal before ultimately returning to the Spire shop in Mooresville. They then parted ways.
This lunch meeting was not out of the ordinary, according to Dickerson. He said that he and Gabehart have been friends since the fall of 2009. He said that they had meals together to discuss life, racing, and other topics. This particular meal, he said, took place after JGR had stopped paying Gabehart.
"I was surprised and, quite frankly, disturbed to learn that a competitor in our industry had hired someone to follow its former employee around," he wrote in the declaration.
"I cannot stress this enough: It is extraordinary for an organization in our business to hire a private investigator to follow around any employee, let alone a former employee. In my twenty-five years of experience in this industry, I have never once heard of a team doing so.
"Despite JGR being well aware that Spire was recruiting Mr. Gabehart as early as December 2, 2025, no one at JGR ever contacted me to claim that Mr. Gabehart was subject to an applicable non-compete (until JGR filed this lawsuit)."
The Trade Agreement
One particularly interesting part of this declaration is an alleged trade agreement between the two teams. Dickerson wrote that in the spring of 2025, he learned that Coach Joe Gibbs and Heather Gibbs were actively recruiting the car chief of the No. 7 Chevrolet, Robert Smith.
He said that he discovered this after reaching out to Gabehart — then a JGR employee — and suggesting that Spire Motorsports had the car chief and crew chief that would benefit the team and Ty Gibbs.
Dickerson wrote that he was torn between retaining Smith as a car chief and letting him potentially take a role with JGR. Doing the latter would require waiving the non-compete on Smith's contract.
"Given JGR's interest in Mr. Smith, and given that he was under an active contract with a term that did not expire for many months and also subject to a non-compete that would not allow for the immediate relief JGR was seeking for Ty Gibbs, I told JGR that if it made an offer to Mr. Smith that was acceptable to him and he accepted that offer, Spire would agree to mutually terminate Robert Smith's contract, which would allow him to begin working for JGR immediately — in exchange for JGR extending the same waiver for an employee that Spire would identify in the future," Dickerson wrote.
"Mr. Gabehart, at the direction of Coach Gibbs and Heather Gibbs, insisted that JGR have the option to fulfill the agreement by making a $100,000 payment as an alternative to extending a waiver for an employee that Spire would identify in the future. I agreed to that proposal, with the understanding that JGR would make good on our deal by the end of 2025."
According to Dickerson, he reached out to JGR multiple times after Smith took the job and made inquiries about possible employees he could recruit. He said that the team rejected his requests. He said that JGR still has not paid the $100,000 as part of the Trade Agreement.
