Ferrari and McLaren secrets leaked in FIA document
Highly sensitive Ferrari and McLaren information has been leaked onto the internet in an apparent blunder by the FIA.
The transcripts from the World Motor Sports Council hearings into the espionage affair in July and September were published yesterday.
They were supposed to censor sensitive information relevant to the teams involved but due to a blunder in the production of the documents that has not happened. Areas of text that are blacked out in the documents can be revealed by simply copying and pasting the text into a new document.
Before
After
They revealed Mike Coughlan’s salary at McLaren (£300-400K), Ferrari’s work on optimising weight distribution on the 2007 specification Bridgestone tyres, McLaren’s work on the same, Ferrari’s work on a rear braking system and more.
Related links
- World Motor Sports Council hearing transcript – September 13th 2007 (PDF download)
- FIA.com – World Motor Sports Council transcripts (external)
Tags: f1 / formula one / formula 1 / grand prix / motor sport
Good old FIA!
Perhaps they did this deliberately so as to show they don’t always favour Ferrari and are actually willing to “accidentally” give out some of their secrets!
i’ve heard rumours about this, but can’t repeat it for love nor money.
when you say ‘new document’, what do you mean? i heard it could be done using Word, but i have a Mac and can’t repeat the process
you couldn’t copy and paste all of the hidden text could ya?
on the website of fia i find the docs with white space instead of the black cencored stripes in your pdf. it that an early version? anyway, works fine just to copy paste, but not with the fia.com doc. maybe an updated pdf version there?
no problem with mac, im on my macbook here. but as said in post, it does not work on the white-striped docs online at fia.com now.
try with f1fanatics black-striped version. link on this site, works fine and hidden words come out. just copy in any word processor!
ok, got in now. looks like i downloaded from the wrong source. the files on the RTL site still have the embedded info:
http://www.rtl.nl/(/sport/rtl_gp/formule1/nieuws/)/sport/rtl_gp/components/formule1/070919_transcripties_mclaren.xml
love it!
got ya daniel. and thanks Keith for bringing this to our attention.
loving the ‘07 season
Yep you have to use the original version which is on the download link above – the FIA have re-issued the PDFs with the censored passages whited out. But there’s copies of the originals everywhere.
Select all the text and copy it into Notepad, Word or something similar and it should work.
what do think the repercussions of this will be?
“what do think the repercussions of this will be?”: the FIA censuring itself for bringing it’s own sport into disrepute?
Nah, never happen
Every other chief designer asking ‘why don’t I earn as much as Mike Coughlan?’
Presumably the FIA will fine itself 100 meellion dollars (always think of Austin Powers whenever I see that figure) and exclude itself from all decisions taken on during the 2007 season?
Hopefully Max will resign – he is responsible for every employee after all
#10
Keith, I imagine some teams will be wondering why they are paying their designers so much
Certainly makes for interesting reading!
Good job there’s no grand prix this weekend as the employees of every other team will be too busy reading this to get any work done!
I do hope I’m not the only one who finds this absolutely hilarious. After everything that has happened this year, the FIA messing up in such a blatant and obvious manner really is the icing on the cake.
…the ferrari magic gas to make the tyres blister less? Co2! — I was at least hoping for a few ‘zines or flourides in there
Oh,no Ollie, I think we’re all laughing. This is the best pay off for the last couple of months that any of us could ever have imagined. I hear there’s a job opening over at the FIA. Any takers?
Yet it does distract us from actual study of the document. Max may be much cleverer than you think.
Ah, so that’s why I couldn’t get hold of a copy when I went to the fia.com site at 12:40pm yesterday! The hyperlink had gone, and I commented about it in my blog, along with the re-appearance of the hyperlinks at or before 2pm. This is intriguing, but I think it would be unfair on the teams involved for me to go looking for the uncensored version. Simply because an industrial secret is released by accident does not mean it is legitimate for everyone to go and read it regardless.
this is hillarious
and the rtl.nl link still points to the black censored pdf file, copy and paste still works 
So, the FIA seeking revenge on McLaren and Ferrari for the whole business?
These people run F1!!!!!
What do they think they are doing!!!!!
Funny though
Well what trick does the FIA have up their sleeve next? Does anyone have an electronic copy of this “blanked out” document they could email to me? (eltoca21@hotmail.com)
It’s in the ‘related links’ at the bottom of the article.
…and just when we thought the FIA couldn’t prove (once again)that they can’t run this sport properly.
Ha,ha,ha,ha,ha…breathe…Ha,ha,ha,ha!!
I love that title; “Extraordinary Meeting of the World Motorsport Council”. Whoever came up with that should write comic books!
You don’t even need to export the text out of Acrobat. I managed to cut the black boxes off the text, and then saved the PDFs. You’d have thought that they’d have had the gumption to password-protect the PDF to prevent any changes being made, such as this, but no, they didn’t. If the website owner of F1Afanatic wants the PDFs off me, he can get my e-mail address from my post on here.
boring boring boring. sack alonso he threw his dummy out the pram and now mummy has no money left for sweeties.
Eric M, the “Extraordinary Meeting of the World Motorsport Council†is simply the name given to any WMSC meeting not planned several months in advance. If the FIA had known three or four months ago that McLaren would be getting scolded at such a meeting, we would have had the masterpiece of understatement “General Meeting of the World Motorsport Council”.
Mad Max should be running for President of the USA, or the EU, how about Prime Minister? He already comes with a Cabinet of Incompetents and is obviously open to any offer of “consideration” when in comes from well heeled “suits”. He’s a perfect candidate for any of the above positions.
Well actually you’ve hit on a very interesting and perhaps tragic element of Max Mosley’s life there.
He is the son of Oswald Mosley, leader of the pro-Nazi British Fascist party of the 1930s, and that simple fact would surely place insurmountable objects in his path should he choose to embark on a career in professional politics.
Alright, where’s the rest of the censored information? I need to satisfy my engineering curiosity
Download the PDF on the link, it’s all there.
Keith – yes, I think Mosley’s tragedy is that he never wanted to play in the toy world of F1 in the first place, his heart was always set on proper politics.
I understand that years ago Mosley sounded out the Tory party in the UK and was told that his father’s name would be an insurmountable obstacle.
This is really funny thought . i like it
btw: did you take down the PDF, or was it lost during the move?
Looks like it did go wandering. ’tis fixed now.