As the legal battle between Joe Gibbs Racing, its former competition director, Chris Gabehart, and Gabehart’s new team, Spire Motorsports, wages on, we keep being shown new layers of onion that possibly laid the groundwork for how these two race teams found themselves to be seated across from one another in North Carolina District Court.
In a declaration from Jeff Dickerson, a co-owner of Spire Motorsports, which was added as a defendant in the lawsuit by Joe Gibbs Racing last month, Dickerson says a conversation with Joe Gibbs on pit road following a March 2025 race at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, where Ty Gibbs and Carson Hocevar had a run-in on track, allowed him to sense that Gibbs needed a more mature and experienced group for JGR’s No. 54 team and its driver, Ty Gibbs.
Dickerson says soon after that race, he touched base with Gabehart, then JGR’s Competition Director, to float the idea that Spire Motorsports like had a crew chief and car chief that Joe Gibbs Racing would benefit from in regards to the No. 54 team.
Dickerson explained,