Denny Hamlin feels personally betrayed by Chris Gabehart amidst lawsuit

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Denny Hamlin said it was a 'knee jerk reaction' when he tweeted out a frustrated response on Thursday evening to Spire Motorsports co-owner Jeff Dickerson’s commentary about the ongoing lawsuit brought forth by Joe Gibbs Racing.

Yeah, okay buddy. You hired someone who stole tens of millions worth of information, lied about communications y’all had after you deleted them and now is getting paid double to work on your truck program? GTFO.
What was it you called Richard again?
Was it you who was leaking…

— Denny Hamlin (@dennyhamlin) May 1, 2026

Even though it was an emotional response, Hamlin also concedes that he logically feels this way too, as it is a matter of business principle to him as a Joe Gibb Racing driver and 23XI Racing co-owner.

“Well, it was, first, it was a knee jerk reaction but it doesn’t mean I don’t feel that way,” Hamlin told reporters on Saturday at Texas Motor Speedway. “It was a little bit knee-jerk but I certainly feel like I know enough of the facts to at least assert something.

“I know that (Joe Gibbs Racing) has not ever gone after anyone, I can tell you that. They don’t care who else is running good or whatever. They just invest so much into the sport in terms of technology, and Toyota as well, that they have to protect that.

“Otherwise, it’s an arms race. If we didn’t protect very important key employees with non-competes and things like that, it would be an arms race, and I would just go to someone at Hendrick, maybe Chad Knaus, and say ‘okay,’ I’ll just give him $10 million a year and ‘bring everything with you.’

“That’s just not the way this can operate.”

Hamlin said this lawsuit is ‘a very important process’ that needs to be addressed and that his fellow team owners would agree that intellectual property ‘something that needs to be protected because it is too valuable.’ Hamlin said JGR spends an ‘astronomical amount’ of money on proprietary competition data that he believes needs to be protected.

Why did Hamlin feel so compelled to respond to Dickerson like that?

“I just felt like he went after the family and JGR’s family is my family,” Hamlin said. “So that’s where the knee-jerk came from.”

From 2019 to 2024, Gabehart served as crew chief for Hamlin, where they won 22 races together, including two Daytona 500s and a Southern 500. Their success was synonymous. Gabehart was placed as competition director at JGR in 2025.

To wit, Hamlin feels like the data that the court has confirmed that Gabehart 'misappropriated' was the byproduct of his work.

"Some of the things that have already been agreed that that was taken is stuff that I put hours and days and weeks and years into," Hamlin said. "Like, I just couldn't fathom giving that to someone else for free.

"So, that's where, to me, it just strikes hard because when you see setups and stuff, it's like, I know I was a piece of that puzzle, not the whole puzzle, but there was a lot of people that contributed to that, that deserved to have that information to themselves."

Does Hamlin feel personal betrayal from Gabehart? There was a 10 second silence as Hamlin pondered the question.

He nodded his head slowly, twice, and that was the last question he took during this particular media scrum.

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