The Joe Gibbs Racing lawsuit is entering a crucial phase, with prominent NASCAR names now being pulled closer into the legal battle. Just days after the organization formally withdrew its claim that Chris Gabehart was actively managing Spire’s race-day strategy, legal reporter Shannon Hansen has revealed that Denny Hamlin and Heather Gibbs are now set to give depositions in the case.
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Both Hamlin and Gibbs have been confirmed to testify sometime between July and August. Heather will speak as Joe Gibbs Racing’s corporate representative. Hamlin, meanwhile, filed a declaration early on supporting the injunction and was flagged as a potential witness from day one.
Hansen, who has been tracking this case closely, revealed on X that both sides are fighting over which documents should be sealed and whether materials are being deliberately withheld. JGR’s motion to dismiss former crew chief Gabehart’s counterclaims is fully briefed and awaiting the court’s decision.
For six years, Gabehart and Denny Hamlin were one of NASCAR’s best driver-crew chief pairings. They won 22 races together, including two Daytona 500s. Then Gabehart got promoted to JGR’s Competition Director ahead of 2025 and asked for control over every racing department under the JGR roof. Joe Gibbs said no, and Gabehart was gone by November 10, 2025.
Joe Gibbs Racing reportedly went straight for Gabehart’s company laptop, and the forensic team alleged that he photographed sensitive documents and dumped data into a personal Google Drive folder he had named “Spire”.
Inside, they alleged, were 20 race car setup files, performance analytics, and employee payroll records. In February 2026, Spire Motorsports hired Gabehart as Chief Motorsports Officer.
JGR’s argument is pretty straightforward: Spire allegedly bought a shortcut. The team is seeking at least $8 million in damages. Gabehart, however, is not rolling over. He countersued JGR over withheld salary and bonuses, while his legal team points to a third-party forensic audit that found no evidence the data was ever actually sent to Spire.
The judge has ruled that Gabehart did take data with him when he left. Whether any of it ever made its way to Spire remains at the heart of the dispute.
JGR also had to give something back. They asked the court to strike their own claim that Gabehart was running Spire’s live race strategy from behind the scenes. They could not back it up.
The jury trial is set for February 1, 2027. That date is more centrally important than it sounds because Hamlin has said publicly that 2027 is almost certainly his last full season.
He wants to retire at 67 wins. He is at 64 right now. His goodbye tour starts the same week he sits down for cross-examination in the JGR Lawsuit.
Hamlin has not hidden how he feels about any of this. On an episode of his Action Detrimental podcast, the JGR star said, “I’m sure Joe Gibbs Racing has spent tens, if not hundreds of millions of dollars over the past decades coming up with what they think is the right answer every weekend,” Hamlin said. “And they deserve to protect that.”
Hamlin was friends with Gabehart. He even credited him publicly for pulling his career out of a winless stretch in 2018. Now he is testifying against him in federal court. The JGR driver has called out Spire publicly for hiding deleted communications and dismissed their leadership’s attempt to brush the JGR lawsuit off as a joke.
Spire co-owner Jeff Dickerson called it a “frivolous distraction.” Hamlin, not long after, sarcastically referred to Spire as “JGR’s satellite team” because their cars started showing setup tendencies that looked a lot like his own dominant runs from the year before.
Per Shannon Hansen, the next update worth watching is the court’s ruling on the motion to dismiss Gabehart’s counterclaims. Until then, both sides are still digging through each other’s documents, and the deposition calendar keeps filling up.