At 16:12 on Saturday, on the first lap after the first Safety Car restart of a race George Russell went on to win, Gabriel Bortoleto passed Sergio Perez between Turns 6 and 7 in Baku. The marshal posts on that stretch were showing physical "SC" boards with waved yellow flags. "The Stewards established that, at that time, the Safety Car had not in fact been deployed by Race Control," reads FIA Document 68, issued at 19:52 that evening. The stewards gave the Audi driver a 10-second time penalty regardless, and the reasoning they published separates the Safety Car question from the flag question.

A real deployment is three signals, not one. Article B5.13.1 of the 2026 Sporting Regulations, Section B, issue 8, dated 5 August 2026, says that when the Race Director orders the Safety Car out, the message "SAFETY CAR DEPLOYED" goes to every competitor, all FIA light panels display "SC", and all marshal posts display "waved yellow flags and 'SC' boards". Bortoleto told the stewards he received the third layer without the other two. He "did not see any corresponding electronic indication and did not receive a Safety Car indication on his steering wheel," and his team told him the same.

His defence rested on reading the post as one message. He confirmed he had seen the yellow flags but, the document records, "understood them to be part of the same Safety Car indication and therefore considered that they were no longer relevant once he had been informed that the Safety Car had not been deployed." Uncertain of the race's status and "not wishing to lose position unnecessarily," he overtook Perez's Cadillac.

Two separate rulings came out of that one pass. On the Safety Car the stewards cleared him, accepting that the conflicting information "contributed significantly to the situation" and that, with no Safety Car deployed, "BOR cannot be considered to have overtaken another car under Safety Car conditions." On the flag they did not move. "A waved Yellow Flag is an instruction in its own right and must be respected irrespective of any accompanying signal," they wrote. "A driver cannot disregard a Yellow Flag based on his own assessment as to why it has been displayed or whether it should have been displayed."

Article 2.5.5 b) of Appendix H to the International Sporting Code, in the 2026 edition the FIA's file dates to 23 June 2026, defines a single waved yellow as "Reduce your speed, do not overtake, and be prepared to change direction," and adds that "overtaking is not permitted between the first yellow flag and the green flag displayed after the incident." The article attaches its instruction to the flag and names no other signal that instruction depends on. Formula 1's Article B1.8.4 imports it and adds that trackside light panels "have the same meaning as flag signals," which puts a panel on the same footing as a flag.

Version 1 of the FIA's 2026 Formula 1 penalty guidelines prices "failing to slow for single yellow flags or lights on the track or overtaking another car" in a race at a "10s Penalty or Drive-Through", with a maximum of three penalty points. Baku's stewards called 10 seconds "the standard penalty for overtaking under a Single Yellow Flag," and the decision line of Document 68 records that time penalty and no penalty points. Bortoleto finished 13th on the road and was dropped to 15th, outside the points on either count.

Nowhere does Document 68 explain why the boards were out. It locates the posts only as "in this area" between Turns 6 and 7, gives no duration, and does not say whether any other driver passed a car under them. The stewards' clock supplies one neighbouring fact: Document 66 timestamps Franco Colapinto's collision with Pierre Gasly at Turn 1, "following the restart", at 16:11, a minute before Bortoleto's pass. Neither document connects the two.

Formula 1's round 16 runs from 2 to 4 October.