What flashed by in seconds during the Super Bowl is now stretching into a courtroom battle. Michael Bay has filed a lawsuit against Cadillac’s newly minted Formula 1 team, accusing the brand of borrowing his cinematic vision for its Super Bowl LX commercial, then pushing him out of the picture without pay.

Filed on 6 February in Los Angeles Superior Court, the complaint targets Cadillac F1 owner and CEO Dan Towriss and related entities, alleging breach of verbal and implied contract, fraud, and unpaid creative services. At stake: more than $1.5 million in claimed damages. Bay says Towriss personally approached him in late November, pitching the idea of having “the most American director” launch Cadillac’s Formula 1 debut. The director responded with a visual framework steeped in space-race iconography, JFK speeches, desert heat, gold-toned spectacle, drawing from his own films and classics like Transformers: Dark of the Moon and The Right Stuff.

According to the suit, Bay only develops concepts once formally engaged. He claims his team later received written confirmation of a “single-bid” hire, prompting him to halt other projects and begin assembling crew, locations, and even an F1 car for a Mojave shoot, all under a tight pre-Super Bowl deadline. Days later, Bay says, the agency informed him Cadillac was “going in a different direction.” He alleges that the final campaign nevertheless echoed his proposed visuals, a move he characterizes as a creative bait-and-switch.

Cadillac F1 disputes the account, maintaining Bay was merely one of several directors considered and that the core concept existed before his involvement.