The Cadillac Formula 1 team is confident in resolving a dispute with film director Michael Bay, following a civil lawsuit for $1.5 million related to the team’s commercial for the Super Bowl.
The lawsuit, filed in Los Angeles, alleges that the Cadillac F1 team and its CEO, Dan Towriss, “apparently stole Bay’s ideas and work for the commercial, without paying for them”.
The complaint, 19 pages long, details that Towriss approached Bay, director of films like Armageddon and Transformers, to work on the project in November 2025. Damages are sought for more than $1.5 million, arguing that Bay and his team “worked almost non-stop” before “Towriss abruptly decided to ‘go in a different direction’ and use someone else to complete the project”.
The commercial aired during the final quarter of the Seattle Seahawks’ victory over the New England Patriots and was used to reveal the Cadillac livery for its debut season in F1.
“We wanted to talk to him about a role as a director, not take creative ideas from him, and I think the group, Translation, with whom we worked did an excellent job developing all that.” “So we are sure it will be resolved amicably, but, from our point of view, last night was a great success and we are very proud of the work that was done and that’s all I can say about it.” The commercial featured a speech by John F. Kennedy in 1962, in which the former president committed the United States to putting a man on the Moon before 1970. Towriss explained that the main goal was to focus on the car, drawing parallels between the challenge Cadillac faces entering F1 and the challenges NASA faced in the Apollo missions of the 1960s. “So, when thinking about the Super Bowl commercial, one of the things that came up very early was that the car needed to be the star of the show,” he added. “In many Super Bowl ads you see celebrity cameos and a lot of things, and that makes it a very interesting ad, but this one was about the car, it was a livery reveal and not an F1 promotional video or anything like that. “So we wanted the car to be the star of the show, and I think with the JFK piece that was a very unifying moment and captured a lot of the emotions that went into this team, of this kind of unbridled determination to win and compete.”“I think our reaction is that we have a lot of respect for Michael,” Towriss said. “I think it’s disappointing that he chose to do that. Certainly, all the creative work was done long before speaking with him.
Dan Towriss, CEO of Cadillac F1
