On 10 September the FIA published a document titled "Bulletin 1 - Format - Amendments to various articles" among the stewards' papers for the Formula 3 round at Madrid. It opens by naming its own authority: "Pursuant to Article 1.3 of the FIA Formula 3 Sporting Regulations ('the Regulations'), various articles of the Regulations are amended and restated for the Madrid Competition as follows". Thirteen articles follow. Article 6.3, the one that awards championship points, is not among them.

Article 1.3 is a real power and the bulletin is a real instrument. It lets the Promoter issue bulletins "that temporarily modify and/or supplement the Sporting Regulations" for a single Competition, binding on all competitors, countersigned for sporting matters by the Race Director and the Chairman of the Stewards. This one carries all three signatures: Marco Codello for the promoter, Steve Pence as Chairman of the Stewards, Simon Gnana-Pragasam as Race Director. Nothing about the Madrid weekend was improvised.

What thirteen amendments covered

Two races per round is what the 2026 Formula 3 Sporting Regulations provide, at Article 5.4: "At each Competition two races (Sprint race and Feature race) will be held". The bulletin restated it for one event: "At the Madrid Competition, three races (Sprint race, Feature race 1 and Feature race 2) will be held". Article 33.1's "One 30 minute qualifying practice session" became "two 20 minute qualifying practice sessions (qualifying practice session 1 and qualifying practice session 2)".

The remaining amendments show how much a third race actually disturbs. Tyre allocation was rewritten twice, at 24.1 and 24.16. Parc ferme and pit-lane articles moved at 31.5 and 31.6. The 107 percent fallback at 34.2, the Sprint reverse grid at 35.1, both Feature grid articles at 36.1 and 36.2, and the race-day allocation at 38.7 all changed, the last of them to read "Feature race 1 will take place on Saturday, Feature race 2 will take place on Sunday". Somebody went through the rulebook properly.

The clause that was left alone

Article 6.3 pays 10 points for a Sprint win and 25 for a Feature win. Its two sub-clauses are written differently, and the difference decides what happens when a race is added. Clause (b) is distributive: "in each race, one point will be awarded to the driver who achieved the fastest valid lap time within the top 10 classified drivers". Add a race and it pays a third point on its own terms. Clause (a) is not: "two points will be awarded to the driver who is shown in pole position for the Feature Race on the final grid issued". Singular noun, definite article, and attached to a race rather than to a qualifying session.

In an unamended rulebook that phrase can only mean the single Feature Race that Article 5.4 provides. The bulletin created a second one and left clause (a) untouched, which leaves the question of whether it then pays once or twice to a reading rather than to a text.

Madrid answered it in practice, and the answer is in the championship document

The FIA's own Formula 3 drivers' championship document for Madrid credits Taito Kato with 20 points for Feature Race 1, where he finished second. Second place pays 18. The other two came from pole, which he took in Qualifying 1. Tuukka Taponen is credited with 28 for Feature Race 2, which he won from pole in Qualifying 2 with the fastest lap: 25 and 2 and 1. Both pole awards were paid, under a clause that names one Feature Race.

A reader checking this against the race classifications will find a different number and should know why. The classification PDF for Feature Race 2 has Taponen on 26, because a race classification counts the win and the fastest lap and not the pole point. The pole point appears only in the championship document. Two official papers from the same weekend give the same driver two different totals for the same race, and both are correct within their own scope.

Formula 2 has now promised the same arrangement at Baku

Formula 2 announced on 14 September that round 12 will run one free practice, two 20 minute qualifying sessions, a Sprint and two Feature Races, which is the Madrid weekend in a different city. The release states that "Pole position in each Qualifying session will award 2 points", and that the allocation follows "in accordance with the FIA Formula 2 Sporting Regulations". Formula 2's Article 6.3(a) is word for word the Formula 3 clause, and so is its Article 1.3. Bruno Michel is chief executive of both championships and is styled per series in each announcement.

No Formula 2 bulletin has appeared yet, and none is late. Formula 3's arrived on 10 September for an event that started on the 11th. Baku runs from 24 to 26 September, so the document that will do this work is still a fortnight from the weekend it governs.

Why the arithmetic is worth doing yourself

A maximum Formula 2 round under the published regulations is 39 points: a Sprint win, a Feature win, pole and two fastest laps. The Baku format lifts that to 67, because there are two Feature wins to take, a fastest lap in three races rather than two, and, on the announcement's reading of clause (a), a pole point in each qualifying session. Madrid's ceiling was the same 67 on the same arithmetic.

Neither announcement published that number. The championships used to. When Formula 2 changed its weekend for the whole of 2021, the FIA release of 1 December 2020 said the changes "have been approved by the World Motor Sport Council" and then did the sum out loud: "The maximum of points that a driver can score over a race weekend has been increased from 48 to 65." That change went into the 2021 sporting regulations as text, at Article 5.4. A season-wide change goes through the World Motor Sport Council and lands in the rulebook. A single round goes through Article 1.3 and lands in a stewards' folder, and nobody publishes the new ceiling.

Nikola Tsolov leads Rafael Camara by seven points, 177 to 170, on the championship's standings page, which prints no round label and no date and is current to Madrid only because the Baku, Lusail and Yas Marina columns are empty. A seven point gap is about to meet a round worth 28 more points than any of the eleven that produced it, and the clause deciding four of those points is the one article the only bulletin to have tried this left exactly as it found it.